Aegean Sea Focus of Long Dispute : Mineral Rights, Territory Key to Greek-Turkish Friction

Here is the background on the dispute between Greece and Turkey over the Aegean Sea:

Territorial Waters--Greece wants to extend territorial waters off each of its 2,000 Aegean islands to 12 miles under the December, 1982, U.N. Law of the Sea Convention.

Turkey, which did not sign the convention, says that would make 71.5% of the area Greek, leaving 8.8% to Turkey and the rest as open seas.

Currently, 43.7% is Greek, 7.5% Turkish and the rest high seas. Turkey says it will consider any Greek attempt to enforce the 12-mile limit a cause for war.

Continental shelf and mineral rights--The dispute began with the discovery of oil off the northern Greek island of Thasos in 1973.

Greece claims ownership of mineral rights in the continental shelf extending from beneath all its Aegean islands.

Turkey says international law defines continental shelf as the extension of a nation’s land mass. It contends that its land mass extends well toward the western Aegean and proposes the continental shelf be divided through negotiations.

Settlement attempts--The governments agreed in Bern, Switzerland, in 1976 to avoid actions in the Aegean that might provoke tension and to hold talks on the Aegean problem.

Turkey wants negotiations and cites a 1976 U.N. Security Council resolution to that effect. Greece says the Bern accord lapsed when talks broke off in 1981 and the issue should be settled by the World Court.

Airspace rights--Greece claims its airspace extends 10 nautical miles. Turkey insists on a six-mile limit.

Cyprus--Turkey invaded Cyprus, which has an ethnic Greek majority, after a 1974 coup backed by the military junta then governing Greece, and an estimated 20,000 Turkish troops are still on the island.

Greece says it will not hold talks with Turkey on any subject until all the soldiers are withdrawn. It made that condition after the Turkish Cypriot community in northern Cyprus unilaterally declared independence in 1983.

NATO--Both countries belong to the alliance. Greece refuses to take part in North Atlantic Treaty Organization military exercises in the Aegean because of a dispute with Turkey over militarization of the northern Greek island of Lemnos.

Turkey says Greek troops are stationed on Lemnos in violation of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the 1947 Paris peace treaties that barred militarization of the Greek islands, especially those close to Turkey.

Greece says it will not participate in NATO maneuvers unless they also involve Lemnos.

History of conflict--Animosity is rooted in the nearly 400-year occupation of present-day Greece by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which overran the area after capturing Constantinople in 1453. Greece gained independence in 1830.

The countries were opponents in the 1912-13 Balkan Wars. In 1921, Greek troops invaded Asia Minor in a disastrous campaign that led to the Turkish sacking of Smyrna in August, 1922.

In September, 1956, Turks attacked Istanbul’s Greek community of 150,000, ransacking stores and desecrating cemeteries. Only about 3,000 Greeks remain in the city.