Former Greek Foreign Minister and Athens Mayor Dora Bakoyannis said Monday that dialogue between Greece and Turkey canno...

Former Greek Foreign Minister and Athens Mayor Dora Bakoyannis said Monday that dialogue between Greece and Turkey cannot continue as long as Ankara maintains threats of force against Greece. Speaking at the 49th annual conference on Oceans Law and Policy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, she made clear that Greece's willingness to talk and its determination to defend itself go together, not separately. Bakoyannis pointed to Turkey's longstanding casus belli over a possible Greek extension of territorial waters in the Aegean beyond six nautical miles, calling it one of several "revisionist claims" that need to be dropped before the dispute can be resolved. She also took direct aim at the 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime deal, which Greece, the EU, and regional countries consider illegal, describing it as a Turkish attempt to formalize maritime boundaries that have no legal basis. One of her sharpest warnings concerned reports that Ankara is considering enshrining its unilateral maritime claims into legislation, which would effectively deny Greek islands rights recognized under international law. "The Mediterranean is a sea of islands," she said, arguing that stripping islands of maritime entitlements would ignore the basic geography of the region. Bakoyannis said Greece is ready to pursue the delimitation of overlapping maritime claims through proper legal channels, but only under conditions free from coercion. She called on Turkey to formally withdraw its threat of war as a first, concrete step toward a better future for both countries. Greece is a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which it considers the binding legal framework for maritime disputes. Turkey is not a party to UNCLOS and has rejected key provisions while selectively applying others, a position Athens has consistently criticized. #GreeceTurkey #AegeanDispute #MaritimeLaw