In the recent period, within the existing tension between Turkey and Greece over the maritime sovereignty areas in the eastern Mediterranean, the name "Seville Map" has emerged, which Ankara believes that Greece and Cyprus use to confine Turkey within a narrow coastal strip in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, so what is the story of this map?
The map of Seville was published as part of a study prepared by Juan Luis Suarez de Vivero, a professor at the Spanish University of Seville, accompanied by his colleague Juan Carlos Rodriguez Matthews in 2004. And Croatia and Turkey to the membership of the Union on the maritime status of the European bloc.
The map, which was requested by the European Commission, grants each of the many Greek islands, regardless of their small size, such as Kastellorizo (Meis) an exclusive economic zone with a length of 200 nautical knots (370 km). In return, the map of Seville of Turkey keeps a marine area confined to its coasts, although It has the longest coastal strip on the average among all the countries of the Mediterranean basin.
What is to be done against # Turkey by showing the "map of Seville"?
pic.twitter.com/MCznRVXVf3
- ANADOLU AGENCY (AR) (@aa_arabic) September 16, 2020
Thousands of islands and
Greece owns nearly 4 thousand islands in the Aegean Sea alone, most of them are small islands, which makes them possess all of this sea by extending the continental shelf and territorial waters of each island separately.
According to the De Vivero study, the borders of the area that Greece says is its continental shelf in the Aegean and the Mediterranean, as well as the exclusive economic zone that Cyprus declared in 2004, constitute the official borders of the European Union, and according to the map, the borders of Greece (which are the borders of the European Union) Its continental shelf starts from the island of Kastelorizo (Meis), and extends south to the middle of the Mediterranean, leaving Turkey no outlet except the Gulf of Antalya.
Turkey rejects the map.
Because the area of the island of Mies is 10 square kilometers, and it is only two kilometers from its land borders, while it is about 580 kilometers from the mainland of Greece.
Greece grants the island of Kastelorizo, according to the map, a continental shelf of 40,000 square kilometers.
Turkey refused, and Turkey
says that Greece and Cyprus are using the map as a basic tool to achieve their dream of isolating Turkey by confining it in a narrow sea space on the banks of the Gulf of Antalya in the Mediterranean Sea. Seville, "I can say that if we continue to stick to this map, we will not be able to solve the problems."
The Turkish minister added that with this map, "there will be no negotiations or discussions, and if there are discussions, no results will be reached, and then we want negotiations that take place in a framework of justice and yield results."
In an article published on the 17th of this month, retired Turkish Admiral Cim Gordenes says that the map of Seville was published on the European Union in 2004, and at the end of the same year he called it, so that an agency of the European Union began using this map.
Admiral Gordenes, who previously held the position of Director of the Planning Department in the Turkish Navy, adds that the two Spanish professors are not specialists in maritime law.
But they both work in the Department of Human Geography at Seville College.
Mevlut Cavusoglu: If the map of Seville continues, we will not be able to solve the problems (Anatolia)
Background to the map
The Turkish military expert explains that the motives for the completion of this map are related to what happened before the year 2004, the date of the European Union’s expansion of the bloc’s membership to include new countries. Establishing wind power stations and fish farms in the sea, and developing tourist areas.
In this context, the European Commission commissioned the University of Seville to carry out a study on the European maritime field due to the reputation of this Spanish university in this specialization. De Vivero and his colleague were chosen for their experience in this field.
During the completion of the study that included the map of Seville, de Vivero asked the member states of the Union to map their maritime spheres of influence, whether existing or future, so Greece and Cyprus presented him with their map, which included their maximum maritime extension in the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea, so that there was no left for Turkey Any narrow sea space off its coast.
In 2007, the map was published in a study published in Barcelona entitled "Atlas of Maritime Europe: Jurisdiction, Uses and Administration". The map itself was used in a project funded by the European Union and supervised by the Spanish National Research Council.
Corrected a
mistake
Admiral Gordenes adds that the Spanish academic Juan Luis Suarez de Vivero completed another study published in 2010 on the fishing grounds of the European Union for the benefit of the General Directorate of Internal Policy of the Union.
In this study entitled "Maritime Jurisdiction in the Mediterranean and Black Bahrain," de Vivero modified the map's details so that only the continental shelf areas or the exclusive economic zones declared by the member states, including Greece and Cyprus, were shown.
De Vivero said in the study that the territorial waters boundaries between Turkey and Greece remain theoretical.
In the Turkish military expert's opinion, the Spanish professor did not repeat the mistake he made in the 2007 study in the 2010 study.
However, he adds that the European Union has, over the past years, used the Seville map in its official documents and websites.
During the tension that occurred between Greece and Turkey in the past few months, statements were issued by European Union officials stressing that foreign reports and studies issued by institutions in the countries of the Union are not official documents of the Union, which means that the Union does not consider the map an official document.