Operation «Take Everything» by Davutoglu

More revealing than ever and with a sincerity that borders on cynicism, Ahmet Davutoglu turned a routine visit to Athens into a high-level diplomatic seminar. Hiding behind his bland face, the Foreign Minister of Turkey developed his «vision» about making the Aegean a sea of peace that unites Greece and Turkey.

Even before he set foot in Athens, he made sure to clarify that Kastelorizo does not belong to the Aegean but to the Mediterranean. With this maneuver, the head of the Turkish diplomacy has revealed that Ankara is seeking a different deal on the establishment of the Greek and Turkish Mediterranean continental shelf from that of the debate on the delimitation of the continental shelf belonging to each of the two countries in the region of the Aegean.

The Dodecanese without Kastelorizo!

What Davutoglu and the Turkish government are doing is showing Kastelorizo and the rest of the islands located around it as a cluster of islands isolated from the rest of the Dodecanese. This way, Ankara is attempting to argue that Kastelorizo, Stroggili and the other 11 small islands located in the same complex, are sitting on the Turkish shelf, ultimately aiming at challenging the fact that these Greek islands have their own shelf and thus are an Exclusive Economic Zone, too.

Indirectly, Davutoglu revealed that the demand of Turkey that Kastelorizo should be separated from the overall discussion about the establishment of the Greek and Turkish continental shelves in the Aegean, has been accepted by the Greek government on the agenda of the so-called exploratory talks. The facts show that the seemingly innocent maneuver by Turkey is in fact a cunning move. And this is because if the limit of the Greek shelf in the Mediterranean is determined according to the median line between Kastelorizo and the Turkish coast, then Greece and Cyprus will have common boundaries of a continental shelf, and thus contiguous EEZ too, an outcome that Turkey wishes to prevent.

The assurances of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Dimitris Droutsas that for Greece the goal of the exploratory contacts is the delimitation of the continental shelf from Evros to Kastelorizo probably confirm Turkey’s demand to exclude the island from the overall deal. And to further resolve any misunderstandings, Davutoglu noted that «Kastelorizo is of course a Greek island». For some, it might seem that the Turkish foreign minister found an opportunity to speak ironically. But what he actually did was say that Turkey does not dispute the sovereignty status of the island, but of the maritime zones, i.e. the continental shelf and the EEZ.

"Trust us…"

And in order to erase all doubt about the real objectives of the Turkish government and Davutoglu, the initiator of the doctrine of «zero problems with neighboring countries», what he said in an interview on Mega Channel is worth noting: «Turkey has long coastlines in the Mediterranean and should have free access to the international airspace and the international waters in the Aegean». At the same time, with almost childlike innocence and while claiming the opening of the Greek borders to the Turkish army, he was requesting that Greece show trust and belief in the assurances of Ankara.

He also proposed confidence building measures to reduce the number of flights by each country, equating the violations and overflights by Turkish fighters with the interceptions of invaders by Greek warplanes, imposed by international law, while he masterfully avoided mentioning anything about the dangers for commercial airliners posed by Turkish fighter planes.

In conclusion, the Greek government is fully exposed to the overt confession of the head of Turkish diplomacy that the exploratory contacts include not only the question of the extent of Greek territorial waters in the Aegean, but also the limits of the continental shelf, and the breadth of national airspace too, an issue to which the Greek government is required to respond, since it officially maintains that the only topic of discussion is the delimitation of the continental shelf, characterising anyone who chooses to claim something different as an author of fiction.