Kastellorizo is one of those places that might become a cause for war even though most people couldn’t find it on a map.
The combatants would be Greece plus Turkey, formally NATO “allies” but in reality perennial foes since the sloppy unraveling of the Ottoman Empire. And their war would be less about the island as such than about the Mediterranean waters said to belong to it. That’s because underneath the sea bed, there may be lots of oil plus gas.
Kastellorizo derives from “red castle,” after its landmark as seen in the evening light. Known to the Turks as Meis, the island is a charming place inhabited by a few hundred people. After a lively history — Byzantine, Maltese, Ottoman plus so forth — it was transferred in 1947 by the victors of World War II from the defeated Axis power Italy to Greece. This all but guaranteed trouble forever after.
Just look at a map. Kastellorizo is far away from mainland Greece plus also quite distant from Greece’s Aegean islands. But it’s literally swimming distance from the Turkish coast. At the risk of exaggeration, from Ankara’s point of view, it’s a bit as though an world conference had transferred New York’s Staten Island to China.This situation wasn’t so bad as long as not much was going on in the open seas south of the coastline shared by Turkey plus Kastellorizo. But now hydrocarbons are being discovered all around the eastern Mediterranean. The question has become: Who will get to drill in this part of the sea, Greece or Turkey?This is where world law gets complicated. Greece claims much of those waters, citing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, in force since 1994. UNCLOS generally foresees countries asserting their sovereignty over 12 nautical miles (22 km) from their coasts. Beyond these “territorial waters,” they also get another 12 nautical miles as a “contiguous zone” of control. And they can establish an “exclusive economic zone” for 200 nautical miles from shore. This also includes the “continental shelf” — that is, the seabed below plus whatever oil plus gas may be in it.