A spatial analysis and game theoretical approach over the disputed islands in the Aegean Sea

Abstract

Throughout history, the Aegean Sea has been a sea of crisis. Today, Turkey and Greece--the two countries surrounding the Aegean Sea--continue to dispute several issues regarding the Aegean. The most significant dispute is over the sovereignty of several islands. This research presents a method to produce an arbitration solution to allocate these disputed islands between the two countries. We identify 39 disputed islands and six important attributes for each island, including perimeter, area, population, distance to Greece, distance to Turkey, and territorial water area. After applying spatial analysis to two open-source maps, we apply utility theory, the Analytical Hierarchy Process, and the Nash arbitration scheme to propose an arbitration solution. The arbitration solution tends to allocate to Turkey those islands with larger areas of territorial waters and greater proximity to the Turkish mainland, and allocate to Greece those islands with larger population and greater proximity to the Greek mainland.