The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute: Resisting the Future

The study provides an extensive legal, geopolitical and historical analysis of all controversial issues making up the Greek-Turkish maritime dispute: the delimitation of territorial waters, the national airspace, the delineation of exclusive economic zones and continental shelf as well as the issue of military presence on the Eastern Aegean islands and its relation to the Greek sovereignty over them. By immersing thoroughly into international jurisprudence, international treaties and historical facts, the book offers a detailed survey of legal precedents and legal regimes over similar issues worldwide. In this way, the reader has the opportunity to ascertain where every single legal and historical argument has been drawn from and its relevance in the international jurisprudence. Consequently, it follows the evolution of the dispute together with all its twists from 1973 to 2022 that saw a new low in the historically tense Greek-Turkish relationship. The book finally re-examines the dispute in the light of the new green energy geopolitics and the ongoing climate crisis and comes up with some suggestions for an alternative paradigm of co-existence in the Aegean Sea which in the author’s view is urgent and inevitable.

Andreas Stergiou is a Professor of Modern European History and Politics at the Department of Economics University of Thessaly and Teaching Fellow at the Open University of Greece. He received his Magister and Ph.D. (with distinction) in Contemporary History and Political Science from the University of Mannheim, Germany. He was Research Associate at Princeton University’s Stanley J. Seeger ’52 Center for Hellenic Studies in 2020.