Greece has condemned Turkey’s creation of two marine national parks in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean, saying the designations are illegal wherever they extend beyond Turkish territorial waters.
The Greek foreign ministry issued its statement on August 16, hours after the relevant decrees appeared in Turkey’s Official Gazette.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed the two decrees on August 15. Both rest on Turkey’s national parks law and hand day-to-day management to the agriculture ministry’s nature conservation directorates.
The larger park, Fethiye-Kaş, covers 21,706 square kilometres off the Turkish provinces of Muğla and Antalya. Athens said its boundaries take in the waters around Kastellorizo, the Greek island lying closest to the Turkish coast.
The second, North Aegean, covers 1,742 square kilometres off Çanakkale and Tekirdağ. It is centred on the Turkish island of Gökçeada and stretches towards the sea between the Greek islands of Samothrace and Lemnos.
Athens argued that no state may unilaterally declare marine protected areas beyond its own jurisdiction under the law of the sea. It said the Turkish decrees produced no legal effect over either international waters or the Greek continental shelf.
The ministry added that the step could not create a fait accompli or alter rights derived from international law.
Greece contrasted the Turkish designations with its own marine parks in the Ionian Sea and the southern Aegean, declared in July 2025. Those, it said, were set up entirely within Greek territorial waters and in full compliance with the law of the sea.
Turkey objected to the Greek parks at the time. Its foreign ministry said “unilateral actions should be avoided” in closed or semi-enclosed seas, and announced that Ankara would bring forward marine conservation projects of its own.
Turkey has not signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and does not recognise a continental shelf or exclusive economic zone around the Greek islands. Greece, which has ratified the convention, rejects that reading.
Greek officials noted that the maps attached to the Turkish decrees show Kastellorizo and neighbouring islands without any maritime boundary line around them.
The two countries are NATO members and signed a declaration on friendly relations in December 2023, since when both governments have sought to keep maritime disputes out of open confrontation.
Greek media reported that the decrees precede parliamentary consideration of Turkey’s “Blue Homeland” legislation, expected in the autumn, which would set out wider Turkish maritime claims in the Aegean, the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
Ties with Brussels are also under strain. Erdoğan said on August 17 that EU membership was no longer a priority for Turkey, though he added that Ankara had not closed the door on eventual accession.
