Turkey should respect international law, says president
Turkey should respect international law where it concerns the exclusive economy zone (EEZ) of countries in the Mediterranean, President Prokopis Pavlopoulos said in an interview with Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram.
Discussing the ongoing talks between Greece, Cyprus and Egypt to demarcate sea boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean, Pavlopoulos said the way in which the EEZ will be defined in the region “will also form a more general precedent on how to apply the rules of international law in relation to this delimitation.”
The delimitation of an EEZ is mainly governed by the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) signed in 1982, which must be applied faithfully for each country in the region, he said.
“And this is what we – Greece and Cyprus in cooperation with Egypt – are doing. Unfortunately, Turkey is moving in the opposite direction, and sometimes in a highly arbitrary and provocative way,” he was quoted as saying.
“We must all – not just our three countries, but, more generally, the European Union and the US – make it clear to Turkey that it has to respect international law, and in particular the Law of the Sea,” he added.
Pavlopoulos is visiting Alexandria, Egypt, on Monday to inaugurate the “Nostos The Return” initiative together with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Cypriot counterpart Nicos Anastasiades, which will celebrate the history of Greek and Cypriot communities in Egypt.
