16 islands snatched by Greece due to Turkey’s negligence, experts claim
A total of 16 islands in the Aegean and Mediterranean have illegally been appropriated by Greece on account of the Turkish government’s negligence, say a number of pundits.
“The government ignored the takeover of Turkey’s islands by Greece in order to be able get a date for negotiations from the European Union in 2004,” Ümit Yalım, a member of the high-advisory board of the Democrat Party (DP) has maintained, noting that the takeover of the islands by Greece began in 2004 with two islands, Donkey and Bulamaç, off the coast of the town Didim on Turkey’s Aegean coast.
Several months ago, Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoğlu said in response to a parliamentary question that there is, as regards some islands and islets in the Aegean, a number of problems, including that of ownership, and that Turkey, in an effort to reach a just solution, is in dialogue with Greece.
But Yalım claimed there is no vagueness as to the ownership of these islands. “These islands belong to Turkey,” he has told Today’s Zaman, also adding: “In fact, following the Lausanne Treaty, the newly founded Turkish Republic, in paying back the debt of the Ottoman Empire to the Western powers, also paid the sum which falls upon these islands.”
The 16 islands which Yalım claims to be Turkish, but whose ownership some analysts see as disputable are as follows: Koyun, Hurşit, Fornoz, Eşek, Nergizçik, Bulamaç, Kololimnoz, Keçi, Sakarcılar, Koçbaba and Ardacıkall, all in the Aegean, and Gavdos, Dhia, Dionisades, Gaidhouronisi and Koufonisi in the Mediterranean.
In the Lausanne Treaty that followed the First World War, which Turkey signed in 1923 with the war’s victorious powers, Ankara agreed to give away islands in the Aegean and Mediterranean that had been occupied by foreign powers during the war. But, Yalım underlined, these 16 islands were not cited among the islands that Turkey agreed would be owned by Greece and Italy. “If the names of these islands are not cited in the treaty, why should their ownership be controversial?” he said. “It means they remained as Turkish territory.” As of 2004, Greece is said to have started building settlements on the islands of Donkey and Bulamaç, requiring Turkish citizens to show a passport to enter the islands.
At the beginning of the 2000s, accession talks with the European Union meant a lot for the Turkish public. In December 2004, the EU declared the it would start negotiations with Turkey in October 2005, which was very positively received by the Turkish public. Faruk Loğoğlu, deputy chairman of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), also believes the Turkish government may have chosen, at the time, to overlook the takeover of the islands by Greece in order not to risk the start of negotiations with the EU, given that Greece and the Greek Cyprus are members of the EU. Neither country blocked the start of Turkey’s accession talks with the EU.
Loğoğlu, who doesn’t find Davutoğlu’s explanations regarding islands sufficient, is of the opinion that the Turkish government hasn’t properly protected Turkey’s interests in the Aegean and Mediterranean. Following Davutoğlu’s statement that the status of the islands was disputed, Greek’s minister of foreign affairs announced there are “no gray areas in the Aegean,” implying that the islands belonged to Greece. “Yet, there are gray areas, serious disagreements in the Aegean,” Loğoğlu told Today’s Zaman. The former ambassador noted also that there has been no objection by the Turkish Foreign Ministry to the Greek minister’s statement.
According to Celalettin Yavuz, vice-chair of the Ankara-based Turkish Center for International Relations and Strategic Analysis (TÜRKSAM), who has misgivings as to whether the Turkish Foreign Ministry properly handled the issue of the disputed islands, the ownership status of the islands in question is controversial according to the Lausanne Treaty. “The foreign ministry must make a clear statement to the public about how it sees the issue,” Yavuz told Today’s Zaman.
“If Turkey in finding out that the islands in question have been appropriated by Greece has not protested, then it’s surely a mistake,” he added. In the Aegean and the Mediterranean, there are 152 islands and islets of which the ownership is controversial. These islands were not given to Greece by any agreement following the First World War.
An arbitrator court may decide, should the issue be taken before it, by seeing if any claimant country has already an established system on the island. If there is no such sign that would make one think that the island belongs to a particular country, then geographic closeness comes as a secondary criterion to determine the land’s owner.