Fishing and Kardak Island 

It’s a well known fact that Greece and Turkey just can’t agree about islands and those in the Aegean are the most hotly disputed, particularly the uninhabited rock known as Kardak to the Turks and İmmia to the Greeks. Ownership of this forlorn outcropping nearly started a war in 1995 and its status is still in question. Only four miles from the Turkish mainland and whose sovereignty the Turks maintain is unresolved but recognised internationally as Greek property, its most recent foray into the headlines has been caused by competition for the fishing rights in the sea around the island.

In earlier times the Aegean Sea was bountiful and Greek and Turkish fishermen in pursuit of sea bream, sea bass, sardines, bonito and tuna had easy relations. Ariana Ferentinou, a Greek columnist writing in the Turkish press, remembers her old fisherman lodger Kyr Yiannis told her; ‘how Greek and Turkish fishermen were working together around Mytelene, coming in and out of each other's territorial waters during the night and how they were able to escape the coastguards who were patrolling the area. After years, they had found a perfect method of communicating in a few words of Greek and Turkish to sharing the sardines at the end of the night.’

Pollution and over fishing have depleted stocks making good catches less frequent. According to statistics released by the Deniztemiz-Turmepa Association in 2002 the Aegean was already being used as a dumping ground for unrefined waste including human effluent, organic materials, heavy metals, detergents and acidic matter. The report highlighted the negative contribution that each littoral country was making; ‘In Turkey there are 14 different points of discharge; seven rivers, six resorts and one industrial area. This is equal to the pollution caused by 10 million people. In Greece, it was estimated that the pollution was equal to the waste caused by 7.5 million people. The total pollution caused by both countries was equal to waste produced by 20 million people’.

The relative scarcity of good fish has pushed Greek fishermen to keep testing the waters around Kardak. In December 2007 eight Greek fishing boats dropping nets around Kardak brought the Turkish and Greek coastguard vessels bumper to bumper. The fishermen claim the right to fish wherever they want around Kardak in Greek waters but the Turkish General Staff insist that in order to get to where they are going the boats constantly violate Turkish maritime boundaries. The General Staff website cited seven violations just in December. The Greek coast guard accompany fishing boats heading to Kardak and the Turkish coast guard turn out en masse in order to dissuade them. Greek media that month reported that the turks had approached the Greek fishing boats in a dangerous manner in Greek territorial waters.

The result throughout the year of 2007 (and into the beginning of this year) has been repeated calls on the coast guards of both countries. At the start of January this year 14 Greek fishing boats nearly docked at Kardak but were intercepted and headed off by the Turkish coast guard, who were already on alert after an incursion into Turkish waters round the island of Çavuş by a Greek coast guard boat the day before. Ramazan Özkaya, President of the Turkish Fisheries Cooperative Association, believes the fisherman are being used as stooges; ‘The Greek troops.... keep mounting the tension. They should not use Turkish and Greek fishermen, who have clinked glasses in the Aegean for years, for political purposes’. The tense situation is no doubt exacerbated by the fact that gilt head sea bream sells for the remakable price of 50 Euros p/ kilo and that it is possible to fish a ton of bream in Kardak in a single day.

Although fishing rights are often disputed worldwide the Kardak issue looks likely to drag on as there appears to be little political will to solve it. The same situation in a different location has had a quite different ending. Ukraine and Turkey have had a long established issue over fishing in the Black Sea. Fishing, mainly for sardines, mackerel and anchovies, remains the most common profession for people in the Black Sea region and thousands of families earn their living from the sea. Black Sea anchovy catches alone can account for up to 60% of Turkey’s fish production in any one year. However, when the fish in Turkish waters diminish, the fishing fleets have been known to violate the territorial waters of neighbouring countries including Ukraine. Turkish fishermen have been arrested and there have even been deaths. İn September 2007 the two countries decided enough was enough and a top level diplomatic meeting found a solution.Turkish authorities provided fishing boats with a vessel detection system to determine the number of fishing vessels, their coordinates and to signal any violation. Any Turkish boats that enter Ukranian waters are warned to turn back and there have been no reported instances of incursions in the last four months.

According to reports in Jane’s Navy International Magazine in January 2007 rather than attempting to defuse the situation in the Aegean the Turkish Coast Guard is building 4 new large patrol vessels at a cost of $325 million. The ships are to be based on the Italian Comandante-class design and are also referred to as search-and-rescue (SAR) vessels. Turkey sees this investment as vital to maintaining the strategic balance of power in the region.

No doubt the new SAR vessels will help haul in the one catch that the Greek coast guard are atively disinterested in – illegal refugees. Just this week a group of 13 refugees from Mauritania where picked up in their rubber dinghy floating off the coast of the Greek island Midilli. According to the refugees they were relieved of their cell phones and other valuables and then towed them close toYumurta island just off the Turkish coast near Ayvalık. The coast guard cynically gave them life jackets before puncturing their dinghy thus forcing them to start swimming towards land. A Turkish fisherman, equipped with enough conscience to think about more than just bream, called the incident in to the Turkish coast guard who arrived and took the bedraggled men to the mainland.