Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan made a statement this week about the Strait of Hormuz that is drawing sharp attenti...

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan made a statement this week about the Strait of Hormuz that is drawing sharp attention in Athens, and not because of what it says about Iran. Speaking about tensions between Iran and Oman in the Hormuz strait, Fidan described Iran's 12 nautical mile territorial waters as a completely normal and accepted reality under international law. "In Iran's international waters there is a right of 12 nautical miles," he said, treating it as a matter of settled fact. The problem, according to analysts and Greek officials, is that Turkey has maintained since 1995 that if Greece were to extend its own territorial waters to 12 nautical miles in the Aegean, it would constitute a casus belli, meaning an act of war. The Turkish Grand National Assembly passed that declaration 31 years ago and it remains officially on the books today. The contradiction does not end there. Turkey itself has already extended its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles in the Black Sea and along significant stretches of its Mediterranean coastline, applying exactly the rule it refuses to accept for Greece. Ankara's argument is that the Aegean operates under a special legal and geographic regime where general rules of the Law of the Sea do not apply. Fidan's Hormuz remarks, according to Skai, now put that argument under fresh scrutiny. Turkey's position was never that 12 nautical miles is illegitimate as a principle. It is that Greece specifically should not have them, in the sea that sits between the two countries. Greece currently maintains 6 nautical miles of territorial waters in the Aegean, well below the international standard, specifically because of Turkey's standing war threat. #Greece #Turkey #Aegean