The Continental Shelf Delimitation Agreement Between Turkey and “TRNC”
Nikolaos A. Ioannidis is a PhD candidate in Public International Law at University of Bristol.
Last month, Turkey submitted a note verbaleto
the Secretary-General of the United Nations setting out the
geographical coordinates of its continental shelf in the Eastern
Mediterranean, as established by a delimitation agreement with the
“Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” (“TRNC”). The agreement was signed
on 21 September 2011 and ratified by the Turkish government on 29 June 2012. A map published
by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs depicting the agreement is
pictured below. (The reasons why the “TRNC” is in quotation marks will
be elaborated below.) By transmitting this document to the UN
Secretary-General, Turkey sought to achieve the publication of the
agreed coordinates in the Law of the Sea Bulletin
(LSB), where official submissions by states regarding the law of the
sea are published. Although Turkey has not acceded the UN Law of the Sea
Convention (‘LOSC’), it acted in accordance with article 84(2) LOSC
(due publicity of charts or lists of geographical coordinates regarding
continental shelf delimitation). Nonetheless, the submission of Turkey was not listed as an official deposit on the website of the Department of Oceans and the Law of the Sea (DOALOS).
The Turkish approach on the regime of islands
