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Türkiye has renewed its proposal for a maritime boundary agreement with Egypt, saying Cairo could gain more than 15,000 square kilometres of additional maritime jurisdiction by reaching a deal with Ankara rather than with Greece, the Turkish Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.
Ministry spokesperson Rear Admiral Zeki Aktürk repeated the offer at the ministry's weekly press briefing in Ankara, days after Defence Minister Yasar Güler made the same case on Saturday. "We are ready to sign an agreement with Egypt on the delimitation of maritime jurisdiction areas," Güler said, adding that Egypt would gain about 15,000 square kilometres compared with any deal it might strike with Greece. The ministry said any agreement should be in line with mutual interests and safeguard the legitimate rights of coastal states.
The renewed offer comes days after Libya's House of Representatives, based in the east of the country, approved the 2019 Türkiye-Libya maritime memorandum on October 20 — reversing its earlier rejection of the deal. The memorandum carves up the two countries' exclusive economic zones in an area believed to hold significant hydrocarbon reserves, but those zones overlap with the waters of several other Mediterranean states. Greece, Cyprus and the European Union denounced the memorandum as illegal when it was first signed, and Israel also disputes it.
Egypt sharply condemned the Libyan parliament's ratification, saying it was a flagrant violation of its sovereign rights and that the memorandum violated its rights within its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf and carried no legal consequences for Cairo. Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty restated that position in talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Istanbul on Friday, according to Egypt's State Information Service.
Egypt and Greece signed a partial maritime boundary agreement in 2020, which Türkiye rejects as null and void, and Athens and Cairo are now discussing extending that agreement eastwards toward Cyprus. Greece disputes Türkiye's interpretation of maritime boundaries and maintains that its islands are entitled to maritime zones under international law.
The ministry announced no negotiations with Egypt and no timetable for an agreement, and the 15,000-square-kilometre figure is Türkiye's own assessment of a possible negotiating outcome, not an area newly delimited or adjudicated. Egypt must therefore weigh Türkiye's offer against its existing relations with Greece and the wider legal and geopolitical implications — the central question being whether the proposed agreement would benefit Egypt or intensify the already tense rivalry over control of the Eastern Mediterranean.