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

On Tuesday, the parliament of Libya unanimously approved a maritime agreement with Turkey to establish a direct maritime economic corridor between the countries.

Turkey had agreed on the corridor with the UN-recognized Government of National Accord in western Libya in 2019. However, the agreement faced opposition from the rival Libyan government in the country's east. Now, though, the eastern parliament has reversed its previous opposition.

The decision, which was welcomed by Turkey's Foreign Ministry, is likely to contribute to tensions with other countries in the eastern Mediterranean — especially Greece .

'Null and void'

The agreement establishes a direct maritime corridor between the southern coast of Turkey and the northern coast of Libya. Large oil and gas deposits have recently been discovered in the region in question — estimates suggest that natural gas reserves worth several hundred billion US dollars may lie beneath the seabed. Turkey and Libya aim to secure their economic rights to these raw materials and are seeking to jointly exploit the resources.

The planned corridor disregards Greek islands such as Crete, Karpathos and Rhodes. Greece's government insists that it possesses a comprehensive exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, around these islands and has already announced its opposition to the accord.

In a post on X, the Foreign Ministry announced that Greece firmly rejects the agreement and has the support of the European Union in doing so. "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," the ministry posted.

Similar wording came straight from Brussels. "I raised yesterday's Libyan vote on a maritime MoU with Türkiye and stressed that it infringes upon the sovereign rights of third states," Kaja Kallas, the European Union high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, posted on X.

International maritime law

Whose claims are legitimate in the eastern Mediterranean is the central point of contention. Greece primarily cites the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS. According to Article 121 of the convention, inhabited islands that "support an economic life of their own” have the same rights to an EEZ as the mainland. This applies to Crete, Rhodes and Lesbos.

Athens cites precedents such as a 2022 ruling by the International Court of Justicethat found that Colombia had violated the sovereign rights of Nicaragua by authorizing fishing activities in the Central American country's EEZ. The ICJ found that when interests overlap a fair demarcation must be reached that takes coastlines, geographical conditions and the implications of a potential boundary into account.

Turkey's government argues that the geography of the Mediterranean plays a special role: If every small Greek island off the coast of Turkey and Cyprus  were granted a full EEZ, Turkey would be largely cut off from access to the open sea. This, the government argues, must be given greater consideration when demarcating the boundary.

Unlike Greece, Turkey has never signed UNCLOS. Therefore, it does not agree to have the dispute heard by a UN arbitration tribunal. Moreover, even international experts on the law of the sea disagree on what a "fair division” might look like in this specific case.

When Turkey pushed for the agreement in 2019, a brutal civil war was still raging in Libya. At that time, Turkey intervened militarily in the west to support the government in Tripoli, thereby repelling the offensive by eastern Libyan General Khalifa Hifter.

Since then, the relationship has changed fundamentally: A successful charm offensive by Turkey's government appears to have led to a political rapprochement with Hifter and his camp. Turkey's government now maintains mutually advantageous relations with both parts of Libya. In addition to the countries' plan to develop energy resources in the Mediterranean together, Turkish construction companies have secured contracts worth billions in recent years for Libya's reconstruction. Furthermore, the Turkish state-owned oil company TPAO and the Libyan National Oil Corporation are already working on joint plans for seismic surveys off of Libya's coast.

Turkey's government has established itself as a new military partner for Hifter's forces, supplying weapons and offering training programs. In doing so, Turkey is pushing back against the influence of Egypt and Russia in eastern Libya and strengthening its role as a geopolitical player in the region.

How Turkey quietly became a power broker in Africa

With the agreement now approved in the regional parliament, eastern Libya also aims to secure its share of the lucrative natural resources. This could give Hifter greater international influence in the future. Disputes in the eastern Mediterranean are likely to escalate further as a result of the agreement — particularly once Turkey and Libya begin extracting oil and gas from the disputed maritime area.

The agreement also jeopardizes a major project that is still in the planning stages: the EastMed pipeline, which is intended to transport natural gas from Israel and Cyprus via Greece, thereby making an important contribution to energy security in the European Union. However, the corridor established by Turkey and Libya cuts across the planned route of the pipeline. Turkey has also argued that projects involving cables or pipelines on its claimed continental shelf require its consent.

In the long term, this could lead to a division of the eastern Mediterranean region into two competing energy and defense blocs: The Turkey-Libya axis might be countered by an EU-supported alliance of Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel.