BREAKING: Turkish counter-NAVTEX for the Abeille Marengo – Ankara disputes the cable surveys south of Kasos

After the Greek NAVTEX for the surveys of the Abeille Marengo, Ankara responded with an announcement of its own. The Antalya station, which comes under the Turkish Navy’s Office of Navigation, Hydrography and Oceanography (SHODB), issued message 1105/26 on Friday, November 6. With it Turkey directly disputes part of the area announced by Athens south of Kasos for the Greece–Cyprus electricity interconnector (GSI) cable.

What the Turkish announcement says

The text, posted on the SHODB’s official website, consists of four points and concerns the Mediterranean:

• Part of the area announced with message HA15-1411/26 “lies within the Turkish continental shelf”, as Turkey notified it to the UN on March 18, 2020 in document A/74/757.
• The Turkish authorities “have not given their consent” to the survey work described in the NAVTEX of the Greek station, which Ankara calls “unauthorised”.
• Any survey inside the maritime zones Turkey considers its own “must be coordinated” with the competent Turkish authorities.
• The announcement remains in force until 22:00 UTC on March 6, 2027, that is, for as long as the work announced by Athens.

The duration is not accidental. The Turkish counter-NAVTEX covers exactly the four months of work for which Nexans requested a permit, so that Ankara has a recorded objection throughout the work.

The Greek NAVTEX and the licensing

NAVTEX 1411/26 was issued by the Hellenic Navy Hydrographic Service after the Foreign Ministry completed the licensing procedure. Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis signed the decision after the positive opinion of the interministerial committee, following a request by the French company Nexans, which is building the cable. The Abeille Marengo will survey the seabed from November 6, 2026 to March 6, 2027. The ship starts from the point south of Kasos where the work had stopped in 2024. Details on the Greek announcement are in our report on the NAVTEX, while the interministerial committee’s procedure was covered here.

Why Ankara invokes 2020

Document A/74/757 is the letter by which Turkey submitted to the UN, in March 2020, the outer limits of the continental shelf it claims in the Eastern Mediterranean. These limits, which follow the illegal Turkish–Libyan memorandum, largely ignore the effect of Greek islands such as Kasos, Karpathos and Crete. Greece rejects these claims and maintains that, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, islands have full rights to maritime zones.

Calling the Greek station “unauthorised” is a phrase that recurs in Turkish announcements. There was a similar exchange of announcements in October over the surveys of the Kobi Ruegg for the EMC cable, but then it was the Greek station in Heraklion that replied with a counter-NAVTEX and called the Turkish NAVTEX “invalid”.

What follows

The counter-NAVTEX does not change the legal basis of the work, which rests on Greek licensing. It is, however, an official record of the Turkish position and may be accompanied by the presence of Turkish Navy ships in the area, as happened in July 2024, when Turkish warships moved near the Ievoli Relume, which was surveying the same area for Nexans. The coming days will show whether the Abeille Marengo starts work without harassment and whether Athens will respond with a new announcement.