Turkey officially approved the new school curriculum which embeds the “Blue Homeland” (Mavi Vatan) doctrine regarding Ankara’s maritime claims in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
According to the Turkish Education Ministry, maps and the concept of Blue Homeland will be taught in secondary school geography classes.
More specifically, the subject of geography for ninth-graders (14-year-olds) will, according to the new program, emphasize “the importance of Turkey’s location characteristics” while discussions of maps will be held related to the Blue Homeland and the “Homeland in the Skies.”
The Ministry says that “the value of patriotism should be instilled as well as Turkey’s justified struggle against demands that ignore its legal and geographical rights in the Sea of Islands (the Aegean Sea) and the Eastern Mediterranean.”
The importance of Cyprus for Turkey and the Turkish world will be mentioned, the program stated.
Subsequently, for students in 10th-grade geography (15-year-olds), “the reasons why Turkey is not a party [of] the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and its rights in international waters today and in the future will be explained.”
It also noted that “the water supply project with the TRNC [Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus] may be explored.”
The 10th-grade and 11th-grade lessons “will emphasize Turkey’s historical ties and sociocultural relations with the Turkish states in Turkestan and with the TRNC.”
“As part of this process,” it is stated that “virtual trips can be made to the countries that fall within the heart and spread of Turkish culture.”
Greece and the Blue Homeland Doctrine of Turkey
In October 2018, the map of the “Mavi Vatan” (“Blue Homeland”) was presented for the first time by Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar in a TV interview with Anadolu as a maritime area covering 462,000 square kilometers in the Aegean Sea, Cyprus, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Black Sea.
Until then, the term “Mavi Vatan” (“Blue Homeland”) was exclusively mentioned in Turkish Navy studies and newspaper articles without any endorsement or use by the Turkish government.
As far as Greece is concerned, the “Mavi Vatan” (“Blue Homeland”) encompasses all areas in which Turkey had until then raised claims to sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the Aegean Sea—i.e. the area for which it has licensed TPAO since the 1970s and has claimed SAR (Search and Rescue) responsibilities since 1988. It also includes the Eastern Mediterranean (licenses to TPAO from south of the Kastellorizo complex & south and southeast of Rhodes up to the 28th Meridian) but also farther west to the outer limits of the Greek territorial waters of 6 nautical miles off the islands of Crete, Kassos, and Karpathos.
With this map, not only does Turkey not recognize the right to the continental shelf of the Greek islands in the Mediterranean, but it also does not acknowledge the right to territorial waters beyond six (6) nautical miles.
Since then, the “Mavi Vatan” (Blue Homeland) has effectively become an official Turkish doctrine with President Erdogan and other members of the Turkish government referring to it on a regular basis.
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