Ankara's draft maritime jurisdiction law reignites Aegean tensions ahead of NATO summit

A draft 'Maritime Jurisdiction Areas Law' unveiled on May 12 in Ankara by Mustafa Başkara, head of the Maritime Law Research Centre at Ankara University, has rekindled the Aegean dispute between Turkey and Greece weeks before NATO's foreign ministers meet on May 20 in Sweden and the alliance's full summit convenes on July 7–8 in Ankara. The press conference was attended by Çağrı Erhan, deputy chair of the Turkish Presidency's Security and Foreign Policy Board — a long-time participant in the drafting work — which Turkish commentators read as political endorsement; Foreign Affairs and National Defence ministries also contributed technical input. Erdoğan's office is expected to bring the bill to parliament after the nine-day Eid holiday.

Greek officials confronted Turkish-Greek Forum members in Athens on May 17 with the question they have been raising in public: "Why now?" "And weren't we no longer supposed to spring surprises on each other?" Greek diplomats argued Ankara should have consulted them before publishing the draft. Turkish counterparts countered with the question of whether Athens had consulted Ankara about militarising Aegean islands in breach of the Treaty of Lausanne — a complaint that drew the response, "that's separate."

The draft's substance is narrower than the politically loaded slogans suggest, according to Yücel Acer, a lawyer involved in the drafting and also a Turkish-Greek Forum member. The text neither titles itself "Blue Homeland" nor uses the phrase; it contains no maps; it does not enumerate any "152 islands" or address contested "grey zones" or sovereignty; it is framework legislation that codifies existing maritime jurisdiction, including the exclusive economic zone; and it adds no substantively new claim. Greek officials' lingering concern is that the bill formally authorises the president on other maritime-law matters, though under Turkey's current constitution all executive authority already rests with the presidency.

Athens has two practical levers. It may try to block the law outright, or — failing that — delay it via U.S. and EU pressure on Ankara to make changes, with an eye on next year's Greek elections, after which Athens could press to keep the "Blue Homeland" debate parked. Ankara's leverage is the NATO summit. With the opposition CHP backing the framework, the AK Party government has rare cross-party parliamentary support and has signalled it would prefer to legislate before the alliance gathering rather than after. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis appears alert to the cycle: he ordered the withdrawal of two Patriot batteries from the Aegean islands that had triggered earlier Turkish complaints — a quiet step Turkish observers read as an attempt to defuse the immediate flashpoint.

The maritime file sits inside a wider Turkish foreign-policy rebalancing this month. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited London last month and Berlin earlier this week; President Erdoğan held a phone call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen the same day as the NATO meeting in Sweden. Ankara's "active neutrality" through the Russia–Ukraine war and the U.S./Israel–Iran war has, in the columnist's reading, strengthened a more European NATO posture even as France and Greece work to slow it. Whether Erdoğan can convert the summit momentum into a wider EU re-engagement depends, the analysis adds, on two domestic democratisation steps Ankara still owes: a parliamentary settlement of the Kurdish question through PKK disarmament — the "Terror-Free Turkey" track — and judicial reform addressing the perception of politicised prosecutions of the opposition.