Turkey offers Egypt maritime border deal

Turkey said on Wednesday that it is ready to sign an agreement with Egypt on the delimitation of maritime zones, claiming Cairo would gain more than 15,000 square kilometres of extra jurisdiction compared with a deal with Greece. Turkish defence ministry spokesman Admiral Zeki Akturk made the offer at the ministry’s weekly briefing. “We are ready to sign an agreement on the delimitation of maritime jurisdiction zones with Egypt, in accordance with mutual interests,” he said. He estimated that Egypt would acquire “more than 15,000 square kilometres of additional maritime jurisdiction” compared with a potential agreement with Athens. Akturk also welcomed the approval by the Libyan House of Representatives on October 20 of the 2019 memorandum on maritime jurisdiction between Turkey and Libya. The ministry called it “an important development” that supports Ankara’s approach, which it claimed “rests on international law” and takes account of “the rights of the coastal states involved”. It said Turkey “will continue to protect its legitimate rights and interests in the Eastern Mediterranean”. The memorandum was signed with the Tripoli-based government of Fayez al-Sarraj and draws a maritime boundary between the Turkish and Libyan coasts that disregards the Greek islands in between, including Crete. Greece, Cyprus and the EU rejected the MOU as “null and void”, and Egypt also objected to the deal. Egypt signed a partial delimitation agreement with Greece in August 2020, a move seen at the time as a response to the Turkish and Libyan accord. Egypt has not publicly responded to the latest Turkish offer.