Official Turkey issued another NOTAM – notice to aviators – over the weekend essentially trying to suspend any military activity on and around Greece’s eastern Aegean islands – essentially a nascent policy by Ankara trying to achieve a “Finlandization” of Greece’s sovereignty.
While Greece’s has dismissed the repeated notices – NOTAMs and Navtexes – by Turkey, issued notices cancelling the former and continuing with its defense activities, the development was telling, coming ahead of an EU Council meeting where Turkey’s actions in the wider eastern Mediterranean will reportedly be under scrutiny.
The notice also comes a day before another Turkish NAVTEX brought a hydrocarbon research vessels to within 10 nautical miles of the far-southeast Aegean isle of Kastellorizo.
Although the Erdogan regime points to “international law” and “customary law” in justifying what Athens and other regional countries call provocations, illegality and belligerence in the eastern Mediterranean, Ankara does not recognize the UN’s international law of the sea (UNCLOS) and, in fact, clings to a 1996 resolution by the Turkish national assembly considering Greece’s extension of territorial waters from six to 12 nautical miles as a “casus belli”, or cause for war.
