Retired Turkish Rear Admiral Cihat Yaycı, one of the architects of Turkey's 2019 maritime memorandum with Libya, is clai...

Retired Turkish Rear Admiral Cihat Yaycı, one of the architects of Turkey's 2019 maritime memorandum with Libya, is claiming that Turkey has effectively expanded its area by roughly 25% through its maritime agreements and territorial claims in the Eastern Mediterranean. Yaycı, a leading figure behind the "Blue Homeland" doctrine that asserts sweeping Turkish maritime rights across the Aegean and Mediterranean, also claimed that the seabed south of Crete holds enough natural gas to cover Turkey's energy needs for around 550 years, according to Greece High Definition, citing Neoi Orizontes. Similar figures he put forward in 2020 reached as high as 572 years. Neither claim holds up to independent scrutiny. An Exclusive Economic Zone is not sovereign territory, and no independent assessment of commercially recoverable reserves supports the gas figures Yaycı cited. These are assertions from a retired officer, not verified findings from any energy or legal body. Greece has long maintained that the Turkey-Libya memorandum is illegal, invalid, and in direct violation of international maritime law. The European Union has backed Greece and Cyprus on that position. This week, according to Reuters, the parliament of eastern Libya approved the deal, a move that will almost certainly deepen the dispute. The memorandum drew worldwide condemnation when it was first signed in 2019 because it drew a maritime boundary that cuts directly through Greek continental shelf territory, effectively ignoring the existence of Crete and other Greek islands. Greece expelled the Libyan ambassador at the time. Yaycı's latest remarks signal that Turkey has no intention of backing away from these claims, and that the "Blue Homeland" doctrine remains very much alive as a guiding framework for Turkish foreign and energy policy in the region. #Greece #EasternMediterranean #BluHomeland