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The images out of Baabda Palace this week were meant to project a diplomatic breakthrough: smiling leaders, signed documents, and confident statements about “stability.” But the core question remains: does the Greek Cyprus-Lebanon maritime deal rest on solid legal and geopolitical foundations, or on a political moment that cannot survive scrutiny?
Despite being marketed as “historic,” the agreement sits uneasily with established maritime principles, the political climate on the island, and the broader strategic geometry of the Eastern Mediterranean. It is a deal shaped more by regional alignments and immediate optics rather than geography and long-term viability. In essence, this is an agreement that attempts to fix an Eastern Mediterranean order that ignores Türkiye. And it speaks the language of stability while eroding the very foundations of trust required to achieve it.
Legal ground or lack thereof
This legal blind spot is exactly where Ankara’s objections come in. The agreement assumes that Greek Cyprus can project a full Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) toward Lebanon as though it were an uncontested, unified entity. International maritime law is more complex. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) jurisprudence consistently prioritizes equity, proportionality, and the weight of relevant coastlines, especially major mainland coasts, when a strict median line produces inequitable results. Yet the new delimitation treats Cyprus as if it were a single, Greek-administered landmass with unchallenged authority. In doing so, it disregards the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and the extensive coastline of Türkiye, which is the longest in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Türkiye’s position is straightforward. Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Öncü Keçeli said that Türkiye rejects this fait accompli agreement and it is an unlawful act of usurpation by the Greek Cypriot administration (GCA) against the equal, inalienable rights of the Turkish Cypriot people. As he stated, a bilateral agreement between two parties cannot diminish the continental shelf rights of third parties. Ankara had already reinforced this stance by submitting its continental shelf coordinates to the U.N. in 2019 and 2020, grounding its claims in mainland geography and long-standing legal precedent.
In contrast, the Cyprus-Lebanon line relies heavily on a strict median approach, precisely the kind of method maritime tribunals often caution against in cases involving major continental coastlines. This tension lies at the heart of why the deal may struggle if ever legally challenged. And while Ankara focused on the legal dimension, the political fallout on the island was equally sharp.
Only weeks before the signing, TRNC President Tufan Erhürman and the Greek Cypriot leadership had expressed willingness to rebuild trust through a simple formula, agreeing on a genuine effort to lower tensions. That optimism crumbled quickly when the Greek Cypriot side proceeded to sign the agreement with Lebanon without informing, consulting, or even acknowledging Turkish Cypriots. That context makes Southern Cyprus’ sudden push to finalize the EEZ deal with Lebanon without consulting Turkish Cypriots all the more politically damaging. As observers on both sides noted, this move risks derailing the limited diplomatic space that had begun to reemerge. It also raises questions about the credibility of the “federal solution” narrative invoked so often in negotiations, yet contradicted by unilateral actions on the ground. For Turkish Cypriots, this was a signal that Greek Cypriots continue to negotiate the island’s future as if the TRNC does not exist.
Larger architecture behind deal
To understand why the Greek Cypriot side moved when it did, one must look beyond the island and examine how the Eastern Mediterranean has been reconfigured over the past decade through a tightening web of political and energy alignments.
The first shift began with the Greece-GCA-Israel trilateral mechanism, established in 2013 as a forum for dialogue but gradually evolving into a structured platform for coordination on energy, security, and regional policy. By 2020-2021, as this axis matured, the European Union’s quest to diversify energy supplies started shaping the map from the north as the shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine only intensified Brussels’ search for alternatives. Crucially, the EU made clear it did not want to replace one form of dependency (on Russia) with another, particularly not on a non-EU transit country such as Türkiye. Israel, the Greek Cypriot administration, and Greece tried to move quickly to leverage it to expand their influence over emerging East Mediterranean energy routes.
In 2021, the United States fully lifted its decades-old arms embargo on the Greek Cypriot side, signaling a political tilt that emboldened these regional alignments. Amid this climate, the EastMed pipeline returned to diplomatic conversations. While Washington expressed serious reservations in 2022 about the project’s technical and financial feasibility, EastMed remained symbolically important because it offered something politically attractive: a Türkiye-free corridor. Around the same period, Egypt’s increasingly coordinated policies with the GCA added geographic depth and diplomatic legitimacy to this architecture. What emerged was a political design that sought to define the Eastern Mediterranean without Türkiye at its center, despite the geographic and economic constraints such a design inevitably faces. Even within EU policy circles, analysts have repeatedly questioned whether this vision can survive the weight of practical considerations.
This regional architecture left Beirut facing a stark choice: align with the emerging EastMed bloc or risk being sidelined in its own maritime future. The agreement offered short-term clarity and a welcome diplomatic success after years of economic and political turmoil. The need for a diplomatic win and investor reassurance was an understandable incentive, yet Lebanese experts, including naval officers involved in earlier boundary assessments and analysts familiar with the 2007 draft line, have repeatedly warned that the median-line model used with Cyprus restricts Lebanon’s maritime potential. Estimates suggest a loss of 2,500 to 5,000 square kilometers compared to a boundary grounded in equitable principles and mainland projections. Reports in Lebanese media indicate that the deal was passed with limited parliamentary scrutiny, raising questions about its long-term political acceptance. With the agreement now in force, Lebanon risks locking in a reduced maritime space at a time when offshore resources are becoming increasingly central to its economic future. Yet Lebanon’s compromise stands in stark contrast to the Türkiye-Libya approach adopted just six years earlier.
Türkiye’s counterexample
No serious analysis of Eastern Mediterranean maritime politics can ignore the Türkiye-Libya Maritime Delimitation Agreement of 2019. Certified and registered by the U.N., the deal demonstrated how mainland-to-mainland alignment reshapes regional maritime geometry. It challenged earlier maps that prioritized islands over continents and reaffirmed a central premise in modern maritime law: large mainland coasts carry weight in determining equitable boundaries.
The Cyprus-Lebanon deal sidesteps this precedent entirely. Whether intentionally or not, it adopts a map inconsistent with one of the region’s most consequential legal arrangements. By ignoring this established precedent, the Greek Cypriot administration and Lebanon have created a demarcation line that is both politically fragile and legally vulnerable to the superior geographic reality asserted by Türkiye and Libya. And this is precisely why the renewed celebrations surrounding the deal are misleading.
Durable arrangements require legal coherence, political inclusiveness, and geographic realism. This deal struggles on all three fronts. It overlooks established maritime principles, sidelines one of the region’s primary actors, and disrupts sensitive political dynamics on the island. Companies are already wary of drilling in politically contested waters, as the ENI Block 3 incident in 2018 clearly shows. ENI CEO Claudio Descalzi said after the incident that he “certainly doesn’t want to start wars for wells, and won’t drill where warships show up.”
The Cyprus-Lebanon agreement does not change this reality. On top of that, an agreement declared “non-existent” by Ankara and challenged by experts in Beirut, offers zero legal certainty. None of these underlying realities disappears with a signature ceremony. A maritime map that overlooks the region’s longest coastline does more than test the boundaries of international law; it contradicts the very principles Europe helped establish. And arrangements built on contradictions rarely last.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance, values or position of Daily Sabah. The newspaper provides space for diverse perspectives as part of its commitment to open and informed public discussion.
