Cover photo: Ria.photocatcher (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
12 Nautical Miles: The Line That Could Start a War
Why extending Greece's territorial waters by a few miles is treated by Turkey as grounds for war.
About
Six nautical miles. A distance so short a speedboat covers it in a few minutes. And yet, if that number grows just a little larger, Turkey has officially declared — and still maintains today — that this would mean war.
On the eighth of June, nineteen ninety-five, the Turkish parliament unanimously passed a casus belli against Greece, should it ever extend its Aegean territorial waters past six miles — a right that international maritime law itself grants every coastal state. From the seventeenth-century "cannon-shot rule" to today's clash over the "Blue Homeland" doctrine, from the nineteen ninety-six Imia crisis to developments as recent as two thousand twenty-six, this book explains, with a balanced view of both sides, why a number of nautical miles has held an official declaration of war between two NATO allies in place for three decades.
First book in a series on the open issues between Greece and Turkey.
Sources
- Hellenic Republic, Ministry of Foreign Affairs — "Territorial sea - Casus belli" — https://www.mfa.gr/en/foreign-policy/foreign-policy-issues/issues-of-greek-turkish-relations/territorial-sea-casus-belli/
- Republic of Türkiye, Ministry of Foreign Affairs — "The Breadth of Territorial Waters" — https://www.mfa.gov.tr/the-breadth-of-territorial-waters.en.mfa
- European Parliament — Parliamentary question E-005757/2018 on the Turkish casus belli — https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2018-005757_EN.html
- Indian Council of World Affairs — "The Greco-Turkish dispute over the Aegean Sea" — https://www.icwa.in/show_content.php?lang=1&level=1&ls_id=8622&lid=5627
- Al Jazeera — "Greek MPs approve extension of territorial waters in Ionian Sea" — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/20/greek-mps-approve-extension-of-territorial-waters-in-ionian-sea
- Wikipedia — "Imia/Kardak" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imia/Kardak
- GreekReporter — "Greece Asserts Intent to Expand Territorial Waters Despite Turkish Threats" — https://greekreporter.com/2026/01/16/greece-intend-expand-territorial-waters-despite-turkish-threats/
- Turkish Minute — "Turkey details draft maritime law to codify claims in Aegean, eastern Mediterranean" — https://turkishminute.com/2026/05/13/turkey-details-draft-maritime-law-to-codify-claims-in-aegean-eastern-mediterranean/
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