On July 24, 2026, the Archipelagos Institute reported that, for an entire week, four Turkish trawlers had been fishing inside Greek territorial waters, in one of the Aegean’s most sensitive and ecologically important maritime areas, between Samos, Fournoi and Patmos. The vessels were employing one of the most destructive fishing methods for marine ecosystems.
The timing was not coincidental. On June 5, World Environment Day, Turkey’s Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, İbrahim Yumaklı, announced the monitoring of maritime fishing zones, including areas in the Aegean that Turkey claims fall under its fisheries jurisdiction. In effect, he fused the “Blue Homeland” narrative, in which Turkey claims expansive waters, with fishing activity and moved to implement it even before the Turkish Grand National Assembly formally introduces the legal framework for Blue Homeland this autumn.
Brinkmanship has escalated into gunfire and standoffs with the Turkish Coast Guard.
Turkey proceeded despite the May 2026 objections of Greek Minister of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy Vassilis Kikilias to Turkish fishermen’s provocations and calls for the European Union to intervene.
The phenomenon is not new. Turkish fishermen have poached in Greek waters since the 1990s but, since 2015, both scale and character escalated. Brinkmanship has escalated into gunfire and standoffs with the Turkish Coast Guard. Most violations have occurred in the maritime area encompassing Samos, Fournoi, Agathonisi, Arki and Patmos, as well as around Chios, Lesbos and the Dodecanese, and periodically in the Cyclades. These incursions are lasting longer, displaying better organization and recurring more frequently.
“These are no longer isolated incidents, but a recurring operational pattern that creates faits accomplis and tests Greek reactions,” explained Rear Admiral (Ret.) Nikos Spanos of the Hellenic Coast Guard, a former director of the Port Police and Fisheries Control and court-appointed expert on maritime accidents.
Illegal fishing challenges sovereignty. The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which constitutes the fundamental international legal framework governing maritime zones, recognizes the coastal state’s full sovereignty over its territorial waters. Only the coastal state has the authority to determine who may conduct fishing activities within those waters.
Although many of UNCLOS’s core provisions, including those concerning sovereignty over territorial waters, conform with customary international law and binding on all states, Turkey—despite not being a party to the Convention—has sought to turn an illegal practice into an instrument of political pressure.
One example is Greece’s Maritime Spatial Planning framework, which sets out the administrative and developmental use of maritime space in accordance with international and European law. “Ankara is attempting to portray every Greek administrative measure as supposedly affecting ‘disputed areas,’ in order to reinforce the narrative of so-called ‘gray zones’ or the ‘Blue Homeland.’ The illegal presence of fishing vessels is often used as a low-intensity means of projecting these claims,” Spanos said.
Beyond its national and environmental implications, the issue also has an economic dimension. Greek fishermen are experiencing declining incomes because of overfishing, while warning of what they describe as a plan to drive them out of business.
Both alarming and suspicious is the activity of Turkish vessels that remain in the Aegean for extended periods, ostensibly to avoid inspections in international waters, while transporting cages containing live tuna. The fish are fattened and subsequently sold for millions of euros in Asian fish markets, particularly in Japan, South Korea, and China. Keeping such large numbers of fish alive for weeks requires enormous quantities of feed every day—estimated at thousands of kilograms of wild fish. Yet it remains unclear where and how those fish are caught, or whether the activity is subject to any oversight.
Turkey, like China, uses overfishing not only for economic gain but also as a tool for strengthening its territorial claims.
It appears that the wealth of the Aegean and the Greek seas—which Turkey seeks to appropriate through the Blue Homeland doctrine and the Turkish-Libyan memorandum—is not limited to energy.
The irony is that Turkey, which presents itself as a reliable ally of the United States and NATO, is adopting practices resembling those of China, a country with which the United States is engaged in strategic competition. Turkey, like China, uses overfishing not only for economic gain but also as a tool for strengthening its territorial claims.
This is why statements such as that of European Union High Representative Kaja Kallas, who called on Turkey to refrain from threats and actions that damage good-neighborly relations, amount to little more than wishful thinking rather than an actual solution.
Ankara has demonstrated that it holds laws and rules in contempt. Drastic measures are required, particularly economic sanctions and consequences affecting Turkey’s European accession process. Such measures must impose a real cost on Ankara if Europe is to end Turkey’s piracy in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
