Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis used a United Nations Security Council debate in New York on October 29 to reject a maritime boundary agreement between Turkey and Libya’s eastern parliament, calling it “blatantly illegal, null and void,” and urged an international truce to protect commercial shipping in the Black Sea following attacks on vessels in the region.
The session, convened under Greece’s rotating October presidency of the Security Council, became the venue for a public clash with Turkey over the 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime memorandum, which Libya’s eastern-based House of Representatives ratified on October 20, reigniting a dispute over Eastern Mediterranean boundaries that Athens says disregards the Greek islands lying between the two countries’ coasts.
UN Security Council Showdown Over 2019 Memorandum
The dispute has remained unresolved since Turkey signed the memorandum with Libya’s then internationally recognized Government of National Accord in November 2019. At the Security Council, Mitsotakis argued that maritime zones can only be delimited between states with adjacent or opposite coastlines, singling out Crete, Rhodes, Karpathos and Kasos as islands the Turkey-Libya line ignores, and describing the boundary as an unprecedented diagonal demarcation.
“It is illegal, it is arbitrary, and it runs counter to geography itself,” Mitsotakis told the Council, describing the pact as a flagrant violation of the international law of the sea. Turkey’s UN envoy, Ahmet Yildiz, rejected the characterization, telling the Council it “is not a maritime delimitation court” and that the memorandum regulates delimitation only between its parties without affecting the rights of non-party states.
Black Sea Truce Call Follows Drone Attack
Mitsotakis paired his objections to the Turkey-Libya deal with a renewed appeal for safety in the Black Sea after a Greek-owned container ship sank following a reported naval drone strike off Bulgaria, one of a series of attacks on merchant vessels in the western Black Sea this month. Speaking at the high-level debate on maritime security, he said commercial vessels must be able to navigate safely even during active conflict.
He said safe passage was essential to restoring grain exports and warned that rising shipping and insurance costs tied to the attacks were disrupting trade and ultimately raising costs for consumers. Mitsotakis separately reiterated Athens’ continued support for sanctions against Russia, arguing that sustained financial pressure remains necessary while the war in Ukraine continues.
Reactions Split Along Familiar Diplomatic Lines
Israel’s UN representative issued a statement backing Greek sovereignty, specifically naming Crete and Rhodes as islands whose status the memorandum could affect, and circulated a video excerpt of Mitsotakis’s Security Council remarks. Washington, in an earlier response to the Libyan ratification, encouraged Greece and Turkey to resolve their maritime disputes through good-faith negotiations without directly questioning the memorandum’s legality.
The exchange echoes a prior diplomatic rupture: Greece expelled Libya’s ambassador in 2019 after Tripoli and Ankara first signed the accord, with Athens and Cairo both calling the deal legally invalid at the time. Turkey maintains the 2026 ratification by Libya’s eastern parliament reaffirms a lawful bilateral arrangement that Greece has no standing to veto.
Why it matters
The renewed Turkey-Libya dispute touches on competing claims to hydrocarbon exploration rights and shipping lanes across the Eastern Mediterranean, a region already strained by overlapping Greek-Turkish continental shelf disagreements. Combined with Mitsotakis’s truce appeal, the UN session underscores how simultaneous security crises in the Black Sea, Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz are pushing freight and insurance costs higher for owners trading through contested waters. As holder of the Security Council’s rotating presidency, Greece has sought to elevate maritime security as a global governance issue, though the sharp Turkish rebuttal signals the underlying boundary dispute remains far from resolution.
Source: Greek City Times / The National Herald / GreekReporter
