Turkey’s maritime gambit: offering Egypt waters it doesn’t own

Turkey says it is ready to sign a maritime boundary deal with Egypt in the eastern Mediterranean, offering Cairo extra waters at Greece’s expense. 

The proposal came just days after Ankara’s controversial accord with Libya drew condemnation from Egypt, the European Union and Israel.

“We are ready to sign an agreement with Egypt on the delimitation of maritime jurisdiction areas,” Turkish Defence Minister Yasar Güler said on Friday. If Cairo agreed, he claimed, Egypt would gain about 15,000 square kilometres of additional maritime territory compared with any deal it might strike with Greece.

The timing is hardly subtle. Ankara’s offer came shortly after Egypt sharply condemned what it called a flagrant violation of its sovereign rights by Tripoli and Turkey.

On Tuesday, the parliament based in eastern Libya approved a maritime delimitation agreement with Turkey, years after rejecting it when it was first signed. 

The deal carves up the two countries’ exclusive economic zones. The problem: those zones overlap with the waters of several other Mediterranean states, in an area believed to hold significant hydrocarbon reserves.

The accord was originally signed in November 2019 with Libya’s former Government of National Accord, at a time when Tripoli depended heavily on Turkish military support. Greece, Cyprus and the EU denounced it as illegal at the time. Israel also disputes it.

Divide and draw

Ankara’s approach follows a familiar pattern: secure agreements with weakened or isolated partners, then present the rest of the region with a fait accompli. Its latest move toward Cairo looks less like a diplomatic olive branch than an attempt to drive a wedge between Egypt and Greece, which already concluded their own maritime agreement in 2020.

Turkey’s maps rest on a contested reading of the law of the sea, one that largely discounts the maritime rights of islands such as Crete. Notably, Turkey is not a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the framework most of its neighbours invoke.

By offering Egypt a share of waters claimed by Greece, Ankara is effectively trading in territory that is not its own to give. Whether Cairo takes the bait remains to be seen. So far, its response to the Libya deal suggests deep scepticism.