Turkey's new deal on Mediterranean maritime boundaries with Libya is exacerbating issues with Greece and the EU

The agreement establishes a direct maritime corridor between southern Turkey and northern Libya, where large oil and gas deposits estimated to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars have been discovered. Turkey and Libya plan to jointly exploit these resources, but the corridor disregards Greek islands including Crete, Karpathos and Rhodes.

Greece maintains it has exclusive economic rights around these islands under international law. "The European Union has described the Turkish-Libyan memorandum as null and void, stressing that it violates the sovereign rights of third states and is not consistent with the Law of the Sea," Greece's Foreign Ministry posted on X.

International legal dispute

The central conflict revolves around competing interpretations of maritime law. Greece cites the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which grants inhabited islands supporting their own economic life the same EEZ rights as mainland territories. Turkey has never signed UNCLOS and argues that granting full EEZ rights to small Greek islands would effectively cut Turkey off from open sea access.

International experts remain divided on what constitutes a "fair division" of maritime boundaries in this case. Unlike Greece, Turkey refuses to have the dispute heard by a UN arbitration tribunal.

Political realignment in Libya

The approval represents a significant political shift in Libya. When Turkey first pushed for the agreement in 2019, eastern Libyan General Khalifa Hifter opposed it while Turkey militarily supported the western government in Tripoli. Since then, Turkey has established relations with both sides of Libya's divided government.

Turkey has become a military partner for Hifter's forces, supplying weapons and training while pushing back against Egyptian and Russian influence in eastern Libya. Turkish construction companies have secured billions in reconstruction contracts, and state-owned energy firms are planning joint seismic surveys off Libya's coast.

Regional implications

The agreement threatens the planned EastMed pipeline, which aims to transport natural gas from Israel and Cyprus to Europe via Greece. Turkey-Libya's corridor cuts across this proposed route, and Turkey has insisted that projects on its claimed continental shelf require its consent.

The dispute could lead to a division of the eastern Mediterranean into competing energy and defense blocs: the Turkey-Libya axis versus an EU-supported alliance of Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel. As Turkey and Libya move toward extracting resources from the disputed waters, tensions in the region are likely to escalate further.