By BalkanView
Greece and Turkey are showing signs of drifting back into confrontation after nearly two years of unusually calm relations, as a series of political and technical disputes revive long-standing tensions in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.
Greek officials say Ankara has effectively frozen talks on the “positive agenda” that both sides launched in 2022 to ease friction. The pause comes after an incident earlier this month involving Hellenic Coast Guard officers and Turkish fishing boats escorted by the Turkish Coast Guard near the Greek island of Agathonisi – a reminder of how quickly operational encounters can escalate.
Tensions flared again on Friday when Turkey sharply criticised Greece’s update of its Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) on an online platform run by the European Commission. Although the plan has been publicly available since April and has not yet been formally submitted to the EU, Athens included maps reflecting its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) deals with Italy and a partial delimitation with Egypt. Similar material appears on a UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission site, where Turkey has posted its own maps outlining far broader territorial claims.
Ankara has recently postponed routine bilateral engagements, including meetings on confidence-building measures, adding to concerns in Athens that the diplomatic thaw is losing momentum.
Greek officials partly attribute the shift to tensions over Turkey’s participation in the EU’s SAFE regulatory framework, which Athens has linked to Ankara lifting its long-standing casus belli – the threat of war should Greece extend its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles in the Aegean. While the issue has limited practical impact – Turkish firms already operate across Europe – Ankara views Greek diplomacy in EU institutions as an effort to box it in on maritime and security issues. European governments, particularly Germany, have reacted cautiously, pointing to the absence of major incidents since early 2023.
Diplomats say Ankara’s irritation is also fuelled by Greece’s growing role as a transit hub for U.S. liquefied natural gas to Eastern Europe, a trend that strengthens Athens’ position in regional energy politics at Turkey’s expense.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry escalated its rhetoric on Friday, accusing Greece of using the MSP process to push “unlawful” maritime claims through European channels. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oncu Keceli said the updated Greek map “overlaps with Turkish maritime jurisdiction areas” in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean and seeks to formalise EEZ claims that Ankara rejects.
He said Turkey had already notified UNESCO’s oceanographic commission of its own MSP in June and reiterated Ankara’s position that the EEZ shown in the Greek plan lies within Turkey’s continental shelf, as registered with the United Nations in 2020. “These attempts are doomed to fail and constitute unilateral steps contrary to international law,” he said on social media platform X.
For now, both sides insist they want to preserve channels of communication. But diplomats in Athens and Ankara say the current trajectory suggests the detente that followed the February 2023 earthquakes in Turkey is becoming increasingly fragile.