Blue Homeland and co-exploitation

Speaking at the end of a Greece-Turkey meeting in March 2013, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan uttered the phrase "kazan-kazan" (Turkish for win-win), a term used to describe a situation in which each party benefits in some way. Erdogan was once again referring to the prospect of co-exploiting the hydrocarbon reserves in areas within Ankara's sphere of interest.

The story goes back a long way. In 1975, Turkey proposed the joint exploitation of natural resources on the Aegean continental shelf. The idea was that Greece and Turkey would each exploit the natural resources within their respective territorial waters, in other words within 6 nautical miles from their coast. Outside maritime borders however, the Aegean seabed would constitute a zone of joint exploitation by the two countries. As viewed by Ankara, co-exploitation means splitting the benefits of any gas finds...