Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrives at a press conference during the 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara on July 8. [Necati Savas/EPA]
“The marine parks in question are also illegal insofar as they extend within the Greek continental shelf. This is, therefore, an action that creates no legal effect whatsoever, either in respect of the high seas or in respect of Greece’s rights over its continental shelf … cannot create faits accomplis or affect in any way rights deriving from international law.”
The above is a selected excerpt from the announcement of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs of August 16.
Ankara’s inauspicious August 15 announcement on the creation of two marine parks in the northeastern Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean are significant. They coincided with Orthodoxy’s celebration of the great Feast of the Dormition and the commemoration of the cowardly torpedoing of peace by fascist Italy (with the sinking of Greek light cruiser Elli) in 1940, which at the time claimed its “living space.” Rome’s August 15 attack is obviously a source of inspiration for today’s authoritarian autocracy of Ankara, a “valuable strategic partner” of the European and Euro-Atlantic West despite all this, according to its state pillars and institutions.
