The French research vessel Abeille Marengo departed the Cretan port of Heraklion on Tuesday evening to resume seabed surveys for the Great Sea Interconnector, the planned subsea electricity cable linking Crete and Cyprus, operating under navigational permits issued by Greece and Cyprus. Hours later, Turkey issued its own counter-NAVTEX disputing Greek jurisdiction over part of the survey route, prompting Athens to issue a further counter-notice on Wednesday, November 11, reaffirming its exclusive authority over the area.
The dispute centers on waters southeast of Karpathos and near the island of Kasos, where Turkey claims overlapping continental shelf rights under its 2019 maritime memorandum with Libya. Greek officials dismissed the Turkish notice as carrying no legal weight, stressing that the French survey operator had sought permits only from Athens and Nicosia.
Competing Navigational Warnings
Greece and Cyprus first issued NAVTEX maritime safety notices for the survey on Friday, November 6, triggering a rapid Turkish response claiming that part of the planned route falls within its declared continental shelf and that the Abeille Marengo required Ankara’s authorization before proceeding. Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said before that notice that Athens had not sought, and would not seek, Turkish permission at any stage of the licensing process.
Greece’s second counter-NAVTEX, issued Wednesday through the Hellenic Navy Hydrographic Service’s Heraklion station, cited Greek Law 4001/2011 and referenced specific survey permits, including one dated November 6, 2026. The notice stated that the designated routes fall within Greece’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf and that the Heraklion station holds exclusive authority to issue maritime safety messages in the area, remaining in effect until March 20, 2027.
Great Sea Interconnector Surveys
The Great Sea Interconnector is a roughly 1.9 billion euro subsea electricity cable project intended to link the power grids of Crete and Cyprus, a scheme that has faced repeated delays over financing and Eastern Mediterranean maritime tensions. According to the project company and Greece’s Independent Power Transmission Operator, the Abeille Marengo is first carrying out equipment calibration before beginning seabed investigations using autonomous systems and unmanned vehicles, with surface units available if required.
The current standoff echoes a July 2024 confrontation near Kasos, when Turkish warships challenged the Italian-flagged research vessel Ievoli Relume during earlier GSI survey work. Greek media reported that a Turkish surveillance drone, believed to be an Akinci-type aircraft operating from the Dalaman naval base, flew repeated circuits over the survey area south of Karpathos, intermittently switching its identification transmitter on and off.
Diplomatic Fallout
Greek Foreign Ministry sources said the Turkish cable NAVTEX, issued after the Abeille Marengo had already sailed based on the Greek notice, “has no significance” because only Greek and Cypriot authorities had received a permit request. Cyprus government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis similarly dismissed the Turkish notice as being of no consequence to the project’s timeline.
The confrontation comes as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis prepares to raise the disputed 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime memorandum at an informal EU leaders’ meeting in Dublin on Friday, arguing that the claimed corridor overlaps with Greece’s exclusive economic zone and a subsequent Greece-Egypt maritime delimitation agreement. Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis has approved the GSI survey operations despite the unresolved jurisdictional dispute.
Why it matters
The standoff underscores how unresolved Eastern Mediterranean maritime boundary disputes can directly affect the execution of critical subsea infrastructure, with implications for vessel routing, survey safety and insurance risk for operators like the Abeille Marengo. The Great Sea Interconnector is a flagship project for linking isolated EU power grids and reducing Cyprus’s energy dependence, making continued Turkish interference a recurring operational risk for the contractors and flag states involved. The episode also illustrates how NAVTEX notices, normally a routine navigational safety tool, have become instruments of sovereignty assertion in contested Eastern Mediterranean waters.
Source: Greek City Times
