Blue Homeland

The Blue Homeland (Turkish: Mavi Vatan), is an irredentist and expansionist concept and doctrine, created by the Chief of Staff of the Turkish Navy Commander Cihat YaycÄ±, and developed with Admiral Cem Gurdeniz in 2006. The doctrine is representing Turkey's territorial sea, continental shelf, and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around the Black Sea, as well as its claims of continental shelf and EEZ in the eastern Mediterranean, and the Aegean.
History
On 2 September 2019, appeared in a photograph with a map that depicted nearly half of the Aegean Sea and an area up to the eastern coast of Crete as belonging to Turkey. The map was displayed during an official ceremony at the National Defense University of Turkey in Istanbul and shows an area labelled as "Turkey's Blue Homeland" stretching up to the median line of the Aegean, enclosing the Greek islands in that part of the sea without any indication of the Greek territorial waters around them.
On 13 November 2019, Turkey submitted to the United Nations a series of claims to Exclusive Economic Zones in the Eastern Mediterranean that are in conflict with Greek claims to the same areas - including a sea zone extending west of the southeastern Aegean island of Rhodes and south of Crete. The Turkish claims were made in an official letter by Turkey's Permanent Representative to the UN Feridun Sinirlioglu, which reflect Ankara's notion of a "Blue Homeland" (Mavi Vatan). Greece condemned these claims as legally unfounded, incorrect and arbitrary, and an outright violation of Greece's sovereignty.
Positions
Turkey's view
Turkey's position, unlike most other relevant states, is that islands cannot have a full Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and should only be entitled to a 12 nautical mile reduced EEZ or no EEZ at all, rather than the usual 200 miles that Turkey and every other country are entitled to according to Article 121 of the . Turkey has not ratified UNCLOS, and argues that it is not bound by its provisions that award islands maritime zones. In this context, Turkey, for the first time on December 1, 2019, claimed that the Greek island of Kastellorizo shouldn't have any EEZ at all, because, from the equity-based Turkish viewpoint, it is a small island immediately across the Turkish mainland (which, according to Turkey, has the longest coastline), and isn't supposed to generate a maritime jurisdiction area four thousand times larger than its own surface. Furthermore, according to Turkey's Foreign Ministry, an EEZ has to be coextensive with the continental shelf, based on the relative lengths of adjacent coastlines On 20 January 2020, the Turkish President Erdogan challenged even the rights of Crete, Greece's largest island and 5th largest in the Mediterranean, stating that "They talk about a continental shelf around Crete. There is no continental shelf around the islands, there is no such thing, there, it is only sovereign waters."
International Community's views
The Ambassadors of the United States and Russia to Athens, Geoffrey Pyatt and Andrey Maslov respectively, while commenting on Turkey's view, stated that all the islands have the same rights to EEZ and continental shelf as the mainland does. The then US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Aaron Wess Mitchell, criticized the Turkish view, stating that it "is a minority of one versus the rest of the world."

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