BY COSKUN KIRCA
AKSAM- Columnist and former ambassador Coskun Kirca writes about the Turkish-Greek disputes over Aegean region airspace. A summary of his column is as follows:
Last week, we witnessed an unusual development in a longstanding Turkish-Greek dispute over the limits of the two countries’ respective airspaces over the Aegean. Athens once again alleged that Turkish fighter jets had violated the Greek airspace and so sent a letter of protest to Ankara. But then an unexpected Greek diplomatic maneuver took the issue to the European Union Commission, officially complaining about the Turkish ‘violations.’ What was the meaning of this Greek move towards the EU Commission, an institution which lacks any internationally recognized authority to pass judgment on the issue? Apparently, Greece was trying to brand EU candidate Turkey as completely unwilling to settle the dispute. And the commission unfortunately bought the Greek trick, and so backed Athens in its cause.
Just as for Turkey, Greece’s territorial waters in the Aegean extend for six nautical miles, but unlike Turkey, its claimed national airspace over the Aegean extends for 10 nautical miles. We can thus see that Greece has long claimed an extra four nautical miles of ‘no man’s’ airspace. However, each country’s airspace is bounded just by the portion of the atmosphere over their territories. This is an international rule set down by a 1919 international agreement and reiterated by the 1944 Chicago Civil Aviation Convention. Yet, Greece is the first country ever to claim airspace over international waters which Athens itself officially had recognized as open seas.
Greece argues that from 1931 to 1975 Turkey didn’t voice any opposition to its unilateral widening of the airspace in question, and in so doing effectively accepted it. However, in this argument, Greece fails to recognize that it did not formally inform Turkey about its decision in 1931 as international law requires. It was only in 1974 that Greece officially informed the International Civil Aviation Organization about its unilateral decision, and in short order the following year Turkey formally declared that it did not recognize this decision. Moreover, in 1974 certain European countries also rejected the Greek airspace claim when Athens withdrew from NATO. Most of those countries are EU members, but now they are inconsistently supporting Greece in its cause.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION