The Gordian knot of the cable: Athens determined to resume the surveys, Turkey demands an accounting as a “coastal state”

The resumption of the surveys for laying the electricity cable of the Cyprus–Crete interconnection (Great Sea Interconnector, the Greece–Cyprus arm) has turned into a “Gordian knot”, as ProtoThema reports in an analysis published today. According to the reporting, the company managing the project is completing the technical preparation and is in coordination with the government on the moment when it will officially submit the request for the licensing of the vessel and the issuing of a NAVTEX. Athens declares “in every way” that the project will proceed normally and that the NAVTEX will be issued as soon as the company submits the request.

Ankara’s position remains unchanged since the Kasos incident in 2024, writes the author of the analysis, Nikos Meletis. The Turkish Ministry of Defence repeats its framework: any activity — cable/pipeline laying or scientific research — in what it calls the “Turkish continental shelf” must be coordinated with Turkey as a “coastal state”. Ankara warns that it “will not allow any unauthorised activity on the Turkish continental shelf”, drawn unilaterally in the letter deposited at the UN on 18 March 2020 — the first official cartographic recording of the “Blue Homeland” doctrine.

For Athens this is a critical exercise of sovereign rights in a legally delimited EEZ and of the rights over the Greek continental shelf, ProtoThema stresses. Athens’s “red line”: in no case can a “notification–request for permission” addressed to the Turkish authorities be accepted, since this would constitute a formal admission — even an indirect one — of the Turkey–Libya memorandum and an annulment of the delimited Greek EEZ, amounting to a form of co-administration of these areas.

The debate over a possible change of the cable’s route — supposedly to avoid the marine park that Turkey has recently declared — was “particularly counterproductive”, according to the analysis, since it signalled to the other side that Greece is looking for ways to retreat under Turkish pressure. In reality, the original route passes dozens of miles south of the Turkish marine park, and — more importantly — Ankara has clarified that its “prohibition” covers the entire area it has illegally “delimited” as a Turkish EEZ and continental shelf.

At the same time, as ProtoThema reports, Turkey again chose Cyprus for a show of force: after the surveys begun in July, it issued a new NAVTEX for surveys by the vessel “Oruc Reis” in the area between Turkey and the occupied territories, for the laying of a pipeline — in response to Nicosia’s moves to strengthen the alliance with Israel and the energy plans for exploiting the natural gas in the “Glaucus” field by ExxonMobil. Diplomatic sources in Athens condemn the move: “unilateral actions for the development of energy infrastructures, without the consent of the Republic of Cyprus, are without legal basis and violate its sovereignty and sovereign rights”, calling the practice part of the effort to consolidate the faits accomplis of the occupation and destabilising for the entire eastern Mediterranean.