How to read this map
This map shows what states and services have said about
this sea. It does not show who is right.
Nothing here is settled by being drawn
A line on a map usually means a border. On this map it usually does not. Most
of what you see is a claim, a declaration or an announcement —
made by a particular state, on a particular date, citing a particular document.
Where two states claim the same water, both claims are drawn, and neither is
styled as the truth.
What the layers mean
- EEZ / sea zones
- Boundaries from Marine Regions. Useful as a reference frame; explicitly
of no legal value, in the publisher's own words. Where a zone is
contested the popup names both parties.
- Territorial seas (declared)
- Computed from what each state has legislated, not from a single global
rule. Greece claims 6 NM in the Aegean and 12 NM on its Ionian coast; Türkiye
claims 6 NM in the Aegean and 12 NM elsewhere. Those differ on purpose, and
the difference is the dispute.
- Median line (reference)
- A thin white line down the middle of the Aegean. It is not a
claim and not a boundary — no state has proposed this line. It is a
geometric median between the Greek and Turkish mainland coasts,
computed here, giving the islands no effect: where a boundary would fall if
only the two mainlands counted. It is drawn because it is measurable,
and so gives you a scale to read either position against.
It is not a midpoint between the two cases, and it would be dishonest to
present it as one. Ignoring islands sits closer to the Turkish argument than
to the Greek one — Greece's position is that its islands generate full
maritime zones, so a line drawn as though they were not there is not the
reference Greece would pick. It runs straight across Greek islands for the
same reason: that is what ignoring them looks like, not a proposal to ignore
them. Read it as one clearly-labelled construction. It is on its own switch,
so you can take it away.
- Disputed claims
- Two kinds of line, and the popup says which you are looking at. Three
are treaty-exact, read off the texts deposited at the UN. Five were
digitised by hand by this map's author from published claim charts:
those are drawn dashed, say so in the popup under
How this line was
drawn
, and are traces, not surveyed geometry. Every feature carries its
claimant, legal basis, status and a source link, and is dated — either when
it was declared, or, where no state declared it, when the trace was drawn.
Lines Türkiye is party to are drawn red so one state's claimed extent reads
as a set; that marks who claims, not who is right. Where a popup
says Asserted position
, that is a case a state argues, not a formal
declaration deposited on a date.
- Declared activity areas
- Sea Türkiye reserved by navigational warning for state survey or drilling.
Every vertex is a coordinate Türkiye broadcast. This records activity, not
title to the seabed.
- NAVTEX activity
- Live navigational warnings — firing, drilling, closures — approved by a
human before appearing. The flag on an area shows who announced it. Where a
warning reached us through a NAVAREA coordinator rather than the actor, the
picture says
relayed by
and the flag is the relay's, not an accusation.
- News
- English-language items, pinned where the story is about. Position
is editorial and often coarse; the popup says how it was placed.
What this map is not
- Not for navigation. Geometry is parsed from free text and simplified
for drawing. Use official charts and the original broadcasts.
- Not a legal source. Nothing here establishes or recognises a
boundary, a claim or a state.
- Not complete. Sources purge their own archives — some 2020 warnings
are provably gone — and short-lived ones can fall between samples.
- Not neutral by accident. Neutrality here is enforced in the code:
required competing claims, colour by claimant rather than by merit, both
parties named on every contested feature.
Names
Place names are the common English forms, chosen so a reader can find the
place. A name on this map is not a position on who it belongs to. Where usage
is itself disputed, the popup carries each party's own wording and its source.