Top map: Northeastern Aegean Sea, where the declared Turkish marine park (dark blue) reaches into Greek territorial waters between Samothrace and Lemnos (orange).
Bottom map: Eastern Mediterranean, depicting the declared Turkish marine park (dark blue) extending into Greek territorial waters between Rhodes and Kastellorizo (orange) and surrounding Kastellorizo itself.
Image credit: fyiteam
Bottom map: Eastern Mediterranean, depicting the declared Turkish marine park (dark blue) extending into Greek territorial waters between Rhodes and Kastellorizo (orange) and surrounding Kastellorizo itself.
Image credit: fyiteam
By the Hellenic Canadian Research Institute
Turkey’s announcement on August 15, 2026, of two new "national marine parks" in the northeastern Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean has been presented as an environmental milestone. But anyone who has watched Ankara’s behaviour in the region over the past decades will recognize the pattern immediately. This is not a marine‑protection initiative. It is a jurisdictional manoeuver — a strategic move dressed up in the language of conservation.
The details matter. One of the declared parks stretches from Tekirdağ toward the maritime space between the Greek islands of Samothrace and Lemnos. The other extends from Fethiye and Kaş toward the waters surrounding Kastellorizo, a small Greek island that has become a recurring target of Turkish revisionist claims. These zones reach well beyond Turkey’s territorial waters. They overlap with high‑seas areas and parts of the Greek continental shelf.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), no state can unilaterally impose national jurisdiction on international waters or on another country’s continental shelf. Greece’s Foreign Ministry responded accordingly, stating that the decrees "produce absolutely no legal effect." That assessment is not rhetorical. It is simply what the law says.
But the legal dimension is only half the story. The strategic intent is the other half, and it is impossible to ignore.
Turkey is not a party to UNCLOS and has spent years advancing the "Blue Homeland" doctrine, a maximalist maritime vision that seeks to shrink the maritime zones generated by Greece's islands (as well as the Republic of Cyprus) and expand Turkish influence across the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. The placement of these parks is entirely consistent with that doctrine. Kastellorizo has long been a focal point of Ankara’s challenges, and the waters between Lemnos and Samothrace have been contested by successive Turkish governments since the 1970s. These are not environmentally significant areas chosen for ecological reasons. They are politically significant areas chosen for strategic ones.
The risk here is not abstract. If unilateral environmental designations begin functioning as de facto territorial claims, the precedent erodes the foundations of maritime governance. It weakens the credibility of international law, undermines cooperative environmental protection, and rewards states that attempt to bypass legal processes through administrative manoeuvers. Marine conservation should be a domain of science‑based collaboration, not a convenient wrapper for jurisdictional expansion.
It is worth noting that Greece’s own marine parks — established in the Ionian and Aegean Seas — remain fully within Greek territorial waters. That is not a trivial distinction. It reflects a basic principle: environmental stewardship must operate within lawful boundaries, not attempt to redraw them.
Turkey’s move also carries major consequences as it injects tension into an already sensitive region, complicates NATO cohesion, and undermines efforts to stabilize Greek‑Turkish relations. At a moment when regional security requires predictability, Ankara’s unilateralism introduces uncertainty and avoidable friction. The use of environmental policy as a geopolitical instrument is not merely provocative, it is destabilizing.
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