In recent years, Turkish propaganda has intensified that there are supposedly “grey zones” in the Aegean, i.e. islands that are not named and whose sovereignty is disputed. But is this true or are these Turkish distortions?
The Turkish claim of “unspecified legal status” or “grey zones” in numerous small formations and islets in the Aegean has absolutely no valid legal basis in International Law.
The Treaty of Lausanne definitively defined the borders and sovereignty in the Aegean.
According to Article 12, all islands, islets and rocks located more than 3 nautical miles from the Turkish coast were ceded to Greece, except Imbros, Tenedos, the Lagouse Islands and the Dodecanese, which then belonged to Italy.
Article 16 states that Turkey renounces all rights over the areas outside its borders defined in the Treaty.
Turkey misinterprets this article by claiming that those islands not named one by one remain pending, which is rejected by international legal scholarship.
In 1932, Turkey and Italy (which then occupied the Dodecanese) signed agreements and protocols of settlement on the sovereignty of their small islands and adjacent islets in the Dodecanese region. These rights were automatically transferred to Greece with the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947.
International Law experts point out that the 3 nautical mile criterion and general geographical enumerations leave no sovereignty gaps. The term “adjacent islets” legally covers all small formations that are geographically dependent on larger islands.
The theory of “gray zones” was constructed by Ankara mainly after the Imia crisis in 1996, with the aim of challenging the established status quo and limiting Greece’s sovereign rights to the continental shelf and EEZ.
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