June 2026 is an important month for Greek interests in the Aegean. Since the 1974 Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus, Greece has gradually shifted from a policy of deterrence to one of appeasement toward Turkey. Over the decades, successive Greek governments have sent signals to Ankara, which interpreted Athens’ stance as weakness and hesitation.
This has resulted in a “domino effect of concessions,” triggered by a series of artificial crises—the 1976 Hora incident, the 1987 Sismik crisis, and the 1996 Imia confrontation. Combined with the casus belli declared by Turkey in 1995 against any Greek extension of territorial waters to 12 nautical miles, these developments allowed Ankara, step by step, to build revisionist claims. Those ambitions eventually culminated in the “Blue Homeland” doctrine—which partitions the Aegean, undermines Greek sovereignty, and seeks to redraw maritime boundaries—as well as the illegal Turkish-Libyan memorandum that challenges Greek sovereign rights south of Crete and across the Eastern Mediterranean.
Since the 1974 Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus, Greece has gradually shifted from a policy of deterrence to one of appeasement toward Turkey.
The Greek government is currently adopting a wait-and-see approach regarding the “Blue Homeland” bill that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party is preparing to submit to the Turkish parliament. The codification of this doctrine into Turkish law, on the one hand, would provide Ankara with a legal pretext to declare an Exclusive Economic Zone extending up to 200 nautical miles from Turkish shores, despite the fact that Turkey’s territorial waters in the Aegean remain limited under existing treaty arrangements. On the other hand, it would bind future Turkish governments to the same revisionist agenda and institutionalize challenges to Greece’s maritime boundaries.
According to several analysts, this development constitutes a second—and potentially more dangerous—casus belli for Greece. Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis stated at the May 2026 Energy Transition Summit that any unilateral Turkish legislative action not based on international law and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) would be null and void, produce no legal effect, and fail. However, Turkey’s repeated success in creating faits accomplis on the ground appears to challenge such assumptions.
An example was the Kasos incident in 2024. The episode bore all the hallmarks of a serious crisis, as five Turkish warships obstructed cable-laying operations in an area forming part of the Great Sea Interconnector, the $762 million Greece-Cyprus-Israel electricity interconnection project funded by the European Union. In essence, Turkey challenged the Greece-Egypt maritime delimitation agreement and imposed the logic of the illegal Turkish-Libyan memorandum on the ground. Greece, many argue, has little time for hesitation. The drafting process and formal submission of the “Blue Homeland” legislation to the Turkish parliament are expected to take place this month. For Athens, the countdown has begun.
Athens considers various response scenarios, depending on how far Turkey decides to push its claims. These include extending Greece’s territorial waters to 12 nautical miles. Another option under consideration is the designation of new marine parks in the Aegean, including in the Eastern Aegean, as a response to any Turkish attempt to institutionalize revisionist claims. At the same time, Greek Members of the European Parliament have submitted questions to the European Commission calling for sanctions, while a recent European Parliament report explicitly condemned the “Blue Homeland” doctrine as illegal.
Washington must take a clear position and prevent the normalization of what Greece regards as an illegal attempt to partition the Aegean.
The major question, however, concerns the position of the United States. Athens has viewed the extension of U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack’s role as Special Envoy for Syria with concern. Barrack, a businessman and longtime friend of President Donald Trump, repeatedly takes positions identical to Erdoğan’s.
At the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, Barrack even joked that he might not be allowed to travel to Mykonos because he believes Turkey will eventually receive F-35 fighter jets. Such remarks have fueled skepticism in Greece. Some reports in the Greek media suggest Barrack may be colluding with the Turkish government to encourage artificial tensions in the Aegean ahead of any Turkish moves.
The fact that U.S. ambassadors to Greece and Israel, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Mike Huckabee, appear to send different messages regarding Turkey has reinforced the perception that Washington is telling each audience what it wants to hear.
Washington must take a clear position and prevent the normalization of what Greece regards as an illegal attempt to partition the Aegean. Otherwise, Washington risks sending the wrong message not only to its allies in the Eastern Mediterranean, but to allies around the world.
