BREAKING: Greece answers Turkey with a NAVTEX – the “illegal” Turkish notice on the Abeille Marengo declared “null and void”

Athens answered the Turkish announcement on the Abeille Marengo with its own NAVTEX. The Heraklion NAVTEX station, through which the Hydrographic Service of the Hellenic Navy issues its notices, issued notice 1441/26 at 22:05 UTC on Tuesday, November 10 (00:05 on Wednesday, November 11, Greek time), declaring the Turkish FA76-1127/26 “null and void”. The Turkish NAVTEX is illegal: it was issued by a station that has no competence in the area and concerns maritime zones where the surveys are carried out with a Greek permit.

The Turkish announcement had been posted a few hours earlier by the Turkish Navy and presented the surveys for the Greece–Cyprus electricity interconnector (GSI) as work in the “Turkish continental shelf”, “with the consent of the Turkish authorities”. The Greek response came the same evening.

The five points of the Greek NAVTEX

In the first point, Heraklion states that an “unauthorised station” issued FA76-1127/26 on the surveys of the French-flagged vessel Abeille Marengo, intended for the installation of the GSI submarine cable, a project the EU has designated of common interest. A significant part of the lines of the Turkish announcement, it continues, lies within the Greek EEZ and continental shelf, as defined by international law and by Law 4001/2011, in full agreement with it. The coordinates of the two lines follow, from off Kasos and Karpathos to about the 30th meridian.

In the second point, the Greek notice cites the Greek permits under which the surveys are carried out in the Greek maritime zones: 31373/07.06.2024, 9020/11.02.2026 and 65808/06.11.2026. The last is dated November 6, the Friday on which Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis signed the permit for the surveys, before the issuing of NAVTEX 1411/26.

The third point recalls that the lines lie in the Greek NAVTEX area of responsibility, where the Heraklion station has sole competence to issue notices. On that basis, the fourth point declares the Turkish FA76-1127/26 null and void and makes clear that the Greek HA15-1411/26 remains in force. The new notice expires at 00:01 UTC on March 20, 2027, the same moment as the Turkish one.

The move complements the political answer given earlier in Parliament by Minister of Environment and Energy Stavros Papastavrou, who said that Turkey “gave a consent” that was not asked of it and that the French company submitted its request only to Greece and Cyprus. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis had kept the same line, saying that only Greece and Cyprus have given permission.

With 1441/26, Athens officially records, in the same field of maritime notices, that it does not recognise Ankara as having a licensing role. The NAVTEX confrontation has followed the survey vessel from the first moment, with the Abeille Marengo having already sailed from Heraklion to calibrate its equipment and begin the seabed surveys.

Read the original report in Greek at NEMESIS HD.