then Italian-Greeco war
Most of the border dispute cases in ICJ relate to maritime boundary disputes and alot of precedents take form from these disputes which are then implemented on land border. The Aegean Dispute is an old dispute and if we actually look into it historically, nations home to the region have always fought for supremacy of the sea just like they did with the Mediterranean now the problems with the Aegean dispute are that it is related to delimitation of the national air spaces, territorial zones, exclusive economic zones, flight information regions, demilitarization of islands and ofcourse the turkish claims of the grey space.
The first thing we must ask is whether the UN Convention of Law of Sea, Is it a customary law? because turkey has not agreed to the convention whereas greece has so here we have another example of the limitation of the Law since International Law does not take a superior place due to absence of sovereign and the principle of equal standing and here we have one nation that has signed the convention and we have another that has no signed the convention.
Is Law of Sea applicable on parties that have not signed the agreement? Is Turkey bound by that law which it has not signed when Article 18 very clearly states that no treaty is binding or creates obligations on a third party?
Jurists of International standing have come to a thinking that when Law of Sea is discussed, it has ceased to function as 'Just a Treaty' and is now considered as Customary law on the basis of Opinio Juris and that with so many nations of the world following the law of sea, thus it has a form of customary nature which Article 38 states is obligatory upon states that arent party to it. We see ICJ judgments where the courts treated UNCLOS as a customary law.
Turkey has done one very right thing and that is that it has opposed such actions repeatedly thus concepts of implied recognition and Acquiescence cant be applied here and it has done it right but the problem would rise if UNCLOS is seen as customary law then it will find itself applicable on turkey as well.
Now in one of the first cases the international court was forced to decide the law of international strait and whether the coastal nation had any right on it. Corfu Channel case, where the United Kingdom had asserted its right of passage through international straits by sending a naval force through the Corfu Channel without complying with Albanian regulations requiring prior authorization. Albania claimed that its sovereignty had been violated by the passage, arguing that the Corfu Channel was not an international strait since it was used almost exclusively for local traffic and was only an alternative route between the Adriatic and the Aegean Seas. The Court rejected this argument and held that
“the decisive criterion is rather its geographical situation as connecting two parts of the high seas and the fact of its being used for international navigation”.
The Court established that, as a matter of customary law, warships and hence, a fortiori, merchant ships had a right of innocent passage through international straits, which could not be suspended by the coastal State. So we see the early formative years of law of sea where the court made an exception that the sovereignty the state could not be extended to an international strait. Now There was another case. Norwegian fishing rights which again speaks that Law of sea is codified as an international law where the courts decided and i quote
The delimitation of sea areas has always an international aspect; it cannot be de-
pendent merely upon the will of the coastal State as expressed in its municipal
law. Although it is true that the act of delimitation is necessarily a unilateral act,
because only the coastal State is competent to undertake it, the validity of the
delimitation with regard to other States depends upon international law.
and this internationalized the law of sea and how only international law can govern any form of delimitation and so if only international law can delimit the sea and that law is the law of the sea then is it not applicable on parties that havent signed it? The Convention was formed from the international practices of old and if no party can delimit the sea lines without international law then that means that the Convention of Law of Sea is not mere Convention but has customary value and many jurists utilize these judgments as arguments of the existence of such.
The international court also made for baseline delimitation and in the german norwegian dispute introduced rights of continental shelf however we need to understand that as complexity of the law of sea grew, so did the judgments and one of the judgments that i would look at here would be equitable doctrine which would evolve into equitable doctrine along with equity in law and this was in libya vs malta case. Now equitable doctrine dictates that the delimitation must be fair and must not be ignorant of the interest of any party.
the problem with the Aegean is that it is home to islands and rock formations that make it basically a semi-enclosed sea and this is the position of Turkey and we can see a rocky line being formed that lends credence to Turkish claims and in Article 122 and 123 of the Law of Sea, states which are home to such need to coordinate and cooperate thus a unilateral declaration will not be possible here at all since one could extend stating international law but a semi-enclosed sea is a different story and such a mention means that it has a special status in Law of Sea. It must also be stated that such an extension of claim by greece would make their maritime boundary from 40% to 70% which is against the interest of equitable exchange. Law of Sea is a vast vast law and i am a very young student in this field.
