The DWG has had a complaint about a protected area based on Turkish law that someone had drawn in international waters. The complaint said that this would amount to a violation of the UNCLOS Article 89: “No State may validly purport to subject any part of the high seas to its sovereignty” because it implies that Turkey would somehow enforce the protected area in international waters.
Another mapper has rightly pointed out that such protected areas exist in many places, e.g. here, apparently created by the Netherlands, in international waters between the Netherlands and the UK: Relation: Brown Bank (13917203) | OpenStreetMap
How are such protected areas enforced, if at all? Can they be disputed (the Turkish ones surely seem to be…)? What legal mechanisms are used to create them in international waters? Should we even map them?
The provisions of this Part apply to all parts of the sea that are not
included in the exclusive economic zone, in the territorial sea or in the
internal waters of a State, or in the archipelagic waters of an archipelagic
State.
Is the complaint about something that is on the high seas?
The southernmost corner of the German protected area Borkum Riffgrund is disputed between the German EEZ and the Dutch territorial sea. The others (except perhaps the Ukrainian example) are all in undisputed EEZ of the corresponding country.
Note that for the Mediterranean Sea near Turkey, the dispute is complicated because UNCLOS does not specify what provisional EEZ border should be used until there is an agreement (unlike provisional territorial sea borders which may not exceed the median line), Turkey has never ratified UNCLOS to begin with, and Turkey maintains a legal interpretation of fairness that favours mainland over islands when dividing maritime zones between countries (such reasoning is also used to a limited extent by UNCLOS members for EEZs, e.g. the Netherlands-Venezuela agreement).
I believe there is also an EEZ boundary agreement between Turkey and Northern Cyprus (which is recognised only by Turkey, of course).
Would it make sense to split the Turkish protected areas in two - an undisputed part inside territorial waters, and a disputed part (disputed=yes, or disputed_by=...) outside?
Or should we just say we don’t map disputed areas at all? That would mean that we would keep all those areas in international waters / EEZ areas where there is no dispute, and remove those where there is a dispute…
Shouldn’t it be treated like On the Water truth? Like if an area is protected by “Turkish forces” or not could be observed. Just might be hard for an ordinary mapper.
