European Territorial Disputes

territory each country in the world has it it's how they exist by having a place to exist some are big some are smaller and some don't agree on which territory they and their neighbors should have so we get territorial disputes to put it very simply these are cases where two countries both demand the same portion of land and cannot agree on who should get to keep it in most cases one of them has currently gotten their way in this video i'm going to go over a few of those territorial disputes in europe i will then probably make videos like this for america asia and africa if there's a good response from you guys and you want me to starting with olivensa claimed by both portugal and spain olivensa is a town situated on a disputed section of the portugal spain border its territory is administered by the spanish portugal does not recognize spanish sovereignty over the territory based on its interpretation of the 1815 congress of vienna a treaty which spain accepted but apparently never followed this one dates back a while all the way back to you guessed it napoleon a man who seems to be at the origin of half of problems in europe in 1801 spain declared war on portugal in what was called war of the oranges the spanish forces were instigated by the government of france to declare war on the portuguese because they were the last remaining ally of the british on the european continent portugal refused to break their long-lasting alliance with the english and so french and spanish troops invaded portugal's loyalty was rewarded by the british who aided them in the war but not enough for them to win the portuguese were able to win the conflict in south america holding on to their colony of brazil but they lost in europe and one of the significant losses in europe was the town of olivensa this conflict also set the stage for the peninsula wars in which napoleon invaded the iberian peninsula fast forward to that 1815 treaty which reshaped europe after the downfall of napoleon where it is written in article 105 that the powers recognizing the justice of the claims of portugal and the brazils over the town of olivensa and the other territories ceded to spain by the treaty of badajoz of 1801 but over 200 years later the issue remains unsolved a fun fact is that the municipality flag is stylized with the portuguese municipal flag template despite still being under spanish rule spain also has another territorial issue but this time with the united kingdom and gibraltar this issue isn't over the territory as a whole as far as i understand spain recognizes british sovereignty over gibraltar this is an issue of where the border should be it dates back to the treaties of utrecht from 1713 which followed the end of the war of spanish succession there's not much you need to know about the war itself in this context other than one of the results of it was that britain was the main beneficiary some say these treaties marked the point at which britain became the primary european commercial power in article 10 spain seeded the strategic ports of gibraltar and menorca giving britain a dominant position in the western mediterranean the dispute here is apparently over the interpretation of the treaty which despite granting the territory to the british in perpetuity also stated that gibraltar be yielded to great britain without any territorial jurisdiction and without any open communication by land with the country around about from what i understand the british interpret this as we own gibraltar and its sports but not the territory around it while the spanish interpret it as you only own the ports not the gibraltar land around them so essentially the dispute is how much of gibraltar the british should own the uk itself also has a couple territorial disputes both of which include ireland the first is over rocco island which denmark and iceland also claim this place is literally a rock in the middle of the ocean so i have no idea why they want to claim it unless it has something to do with gaining ownership to the territorial waters around it four countries claim it the first is the faroe islands who as an autonomous territory within denmark are represented by denmark the pharaohes claim it in order to have continental shelf rights in the hatton rockal area of the sea iceland does not claim the rock itself however they claim an extended continental shelf as well and so are against other nations owning it so that they could use it as an excuse to block their sea area expansion ireland and the uk used to both claim it for the same reasons it caused an issue in the delimitation of their economic exclusive zones the british and the irish signed an agreement which literally just ignores the existence of the rock and got over the issue like that but iceland and denmark dispute this agreement but apparently the u.n states that rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf a convention which the four countries signed but still they're in dispute for whatever reason the other is calling for low a dispute between the uk and the republic of ireland it seems to be a little bit of a remnant of the northern ireland territory dispute with the irish this place is a glacial fjord or sea inland that forms part of the border between northern ireland and the republic of ireland to put it very simply it's somewhat of a lake between the two towns and one of the town is northern irish and the other belongs to the republic of ireland it seems they've had a hard time dividing the lake so at some points either side has claimed it in its entirety there's a bunch of small points along the border between the two islands where issues like this apparently exist moving on to a few big ones the aging dispute between greece and turkey the asian dispute is a set of interrelated controversies over sovereignty in the region of the asian sea between greece and turkey it's apparently lasted since the 1970s and two times already it has resulted in moments of real crisis close to the outbreak of military hostilities specifically in 1987 and 1996. from what i could understand this isn't about land as much as it is about sea and air essentially they argue over everything here territorial waters national airspace economic zones but also the issue of the turks wanting some greek islands to be demilitarized which the greeks don't accept or agree to although there are some issues of land claiming as well it seems that turkey claims a few gray zones some islands that are very small i think the greek turkish sea has literally thousands of these and a lot of them are of undetermined sovereignty and both the turks and greeks want to claim their rule over them a specific example are the two islands of emia and kardak which originated the crisis of 1996. another big one which also includes a lot of specific disputes is russia and ukraine russia and ukraine have at least three big territorial disputes if not more the first and biggest one is crimea in 2014 russian forces occupied and annexed the crimean peninsula they held a referendum in which the results led to russian annexation but the international community and ukraine do not recognize the validity of it and have declared it illegal another issue is the sea of azov this tiny extra part of the black sea apparently it's supposed to have mutual jurisdiction shared between the two countries but in 2014 as well russian ships stopped the ukrainian navy from entering it there's also a few tiny islands on the sea which both countries claim and do not agree upon plus the generalized issue with the entire border apparently since 2001 russia has delayed establishing an official fixed border with ukraine and since 2014 the possibility of that happening seems even smaller if you want to talk about a large number of territorial disputes well look no further because it's europe's favorite conflict area the balkans slovenia and croatia have some issues croatia and serbia dispute not only their entire border but also the islands of sarengrad and vukovar croatia and montenegro dispute the small peninsula of breclava because of it being a strategic location in the adriatic sea croatia and bosnia fight over the kleck peninsula and the two inhabited islands of velik's coal and malik's coal serbia and bosnia probably amongst other things dispute the village of sastavsi which is located in a serbian municipality but lies immediately east of the village of medurekie which is an ex-slave of bosnia and we're not even getting into the whole kosovo thing again so this is an area with a lot of territorial disputes france and italy also have a dispute over the region of montblanc montblanc means white mountains and it's the second highest mountain in europe located in the alps and there's a few issues over who owns the summit the border goes along the scale of the mountain between italy and france but at the very top they dispute it italian officials claim the border follows the watershed splitting the summit between italy and france while french officials claim the border avoids the summit making it french territory only from 1416 onwards the entire mountain was within the duchy of savoy in 1723 the duchy acquired the kingdom of sardinia with this kingdom then taking part in italian unification but in 1792 a french revolutionary army of the alps seized savoy and created a department of montblanc four years later savoy was formally seated to france and in this treaty it is established that the border should be along the peaks of the mountains the issue is should the peak be interpreted as being french or as part of both countries there's also a small dispute between germany and the netherlands but it has kind of been resolved it's over the boundary of the dollar to bay essentially they argue over where exactly the border should be along the water but in 1960 they signed a treaty essentially agreeing to disagree accepting each of them has a different view on the subject but that the disagreement isn't really important and should therefore not present an excuse for conflict a pretty healthy and positive way of handling a disagreement i also included the caucasus region in this video because from my point of view it's still kind of europe or at least it makes more sense for me to include them here rather than with asia armenia and azerbaijan have some disputes over the nagorno-karabakh region and the areas around it apparently this region is internationally recognized as part of azerbaijan but controlled by the nagorno-karabakh supported by armenia and it's therefore also known as the republic of arzak this happens because the region is predominantly armenian populated and when the two countries first became independent in 1918 both of them claimed it still in the caucus there's the issue of georgia's territorial disputes with russia with the specific problems of abkhazia and south ossetia internationally most countries recognize abkhazia as a region of georgia but georgia itself apparently views it as an autonomous republic essentially russians support local independence against georgia south ossetia is the same thing officially a part of georgia but the separatists are recognized and supported by russia there's also a few historical disputes which have been settled such as the island islands between finland and sweden poland and denmark over parts of the baltic sea this one was only resolved in 2018. northern ireland between the uk and ireland a few cases in the baltics between those three and russia even went between italy and vatican over the paseto di borgo a elevated passage that links vatican city with a castle in rome and many many more but thankfully most of these were resolved and plus most of the ones we saw are disputes that exist peacefully but hopefully will even be fully resolved and agreed upon as well so those are a few of the biggest territorial disputes in europe europe has thankfully been at peace for decades now with a few unfortunate exceptions we should remember that while we all learn tragic lessons from the first and second world wars we're not yet risk-free and we should take these small territorial disputes precisely as that small and in most cases irrelevant or at least definitely not worth any type of conflict thanks so much for watching this video if you want to subscribe and leave a comment if you do want me to do this type of video for other continents plus let me know if i overlooked or forgot any other important territorial disputes in europe i will see you next time for more general knowledge

Channel: General Knowledge

Views: 770,808

Rating: 4.903512 out of 5

Keywords: generalknowledge, funwithflags, countriesthatdon'texist

Id: jay_-XZDl7c

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020