The deputy president and head of the Defense Department of the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) of the official opposition, returns to the issue of the Greek government’s creation of a marine environmental protection park in the Aegean. Yanki Bagzioglou, claiming that “Greece is promoting seemingly innocent projects” in the area.

In an interview with the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, Yanki Baggioglu says that scientific studies will be carried out in the area in question with new equipment to detect new faults in the seabed at a depth of up to 2000 meters, arguing that “it is very possible that some of the areas which will be investigated to coincide with Turkish areas of maritime jurisdiction”.

In addition, as he notes, “considering that seismic survey equipment can also be used for gas and oil surveys, it would not be wrong to say that the data that will result from these studies can also to be used to identify reserves (including hydrocarbons)’.

Baggioglu speaks in his interview “for Greece’s unilateral initiatives, which will form the basis for its so-called sovereignty claims”. Asked by the journalist of the newspaper “what can Turkey do against these initiatives?” the deputy chairman of the CHP responds: “Turkey should use its state wisdom and declare maritime areas that will support Turkey’s sovereign claims and protect its rights and interests, on the basis of reciprocity, in areas that will deemed appropriate in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, within the limits of our maritime jurisdiction areas as defined by the United Nations Organization, named “Special Marine Protected Areas” etc. It would be correct to register these declared as “Protected Areas” in the EU and the UN (through the International Maritime Organization – IMO) and in this context the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should assume a coordinating role. In addition, new plans should be produced based on common sense in platforms such as the International Maritime Commission.”

Continuing the deputy chairman of the CHP states: “In order to protect the legitimacy of these declared ‘Protected Areas’ in the international arena, it is obviously important the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of the Interior to cooperate closely, the Navy Administration and the Coast Guard Administration to display a flag and be in these areas and be ready to take the necessary measures against possible violations in these areas. In addition, in the context of reciprocity, the possibility of conducting seismic surveys in the Aegean Sea to locate faults by our seismic research vessels should be considered.”

On the same subject, shortly before midnight on Tuesday, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement, in which it spoke of “the status of certain islands, islets and rocks whose sovereignty has not been granted to Greece by international agreements” and ” geographical formations with disputed status”, stressing that Ankara will not accept “any de facto situations that Greece can create”.

However, the issue was previously raised by Yanki Baggioglu, with his written statement published on Saturday by the Turkish news agency ANKA and subsequently reproduced by Turkish media.

The deputy chairman of the CHP, who in addition to being the head of the party’s Defense department is also a retired rear admiral, also maintains that Greece since the day of its foundation considers its claims in the Aegean as a state policy and states: “For some periods, in the context of this of politics, sought to achieve these ambitions with projects that are seemingly innocent, such as environmental protection or conducting scientific research”.