Greece and Turkey's ambassadors clashed at the United Nations over whether Greek islands generate their own maritime zon...

Greece and Turkey's ambassadors clashed at the United Nations over whether Greek islands generate their own maritime zones, the same legal flashpoint at the heart of the disputed Turkey-Libya maritime memorandum. Turkey's ambassador told the Security Council that Ankara does not dispute the existence, population, or sovereignty of the Greek islands. The disagreement, he argued, is narrower: what legal effect those islands should have when overlapping maritime claims are being delimited. In other words, Turkey accepts the islands exist but rejects their right to their own continental shelf and exclusive economic zone. Greece's permanent representative, Aglaia Balta, rejected that framing outright. She said geography cannot be reshaped, and that no bilateral agreement between two states can erase a third country's sovereign rights. She called the Turkey-Libya memorandum null and void, saying its alleged ratification by Libya's parliament changes nothing about its legal character. Prime Minister Mitsotakis, who spoke to the Security Council earlier this week during his visit to New York, had already called the Turkey-Libya deal manifestly illegal and said all EU member states and the UN secretary-general share Greece's position. He noted that international law allows maritime zone delimitation only between countries with opposite or adjacent coasts, and that any diagonal delimitation effectively wipes the Greek islands off the map. The dispute is not purely legal. It also threatens the Greece-Cyprus electricity interconnection project, the Great Sea Interconnector, which runs through waters Turkey claims under the memorandum. France's Meridiam group, which acquired a controlling stake in the project in August, has been quietly pursuing contacts with Ankara in an attempt to get past the deadlock. #Greece #Turkey #Aegean