Innocent passage regime for the territorial sea within the International Law of the Sea

The seas occupying the ¾ of the earth?s surface being considered as areas open to the access of everybody in the antiquity ages; there have been more allegations of hegemony over the seas especially in the middle ages along with the technological developments and discoveries.In our days, two different legal regimes have been provided for the seas within the control of the state; Inland waters and territorial seas regime. Even though both the inland waters and territorial seas are conjoint seas to the land domain of a coastal state, they have been subjected to different legal regimes. The state plies all the powers possessed on the land domain within inland waters. Even though, by rule, the coastal state possessed the right to control within the territorial seas, their powers have been restricted in order to ensure free and continuous sea transportation. The first of these restrictions are regarding the use jurisdiction in territorial seas. The second one is, as the subject of this paper, is the innocent passage right given to the foreign ship of state.Before undertaking the innocent passage right; the first part of this paper includes the definition of the term territorial seas, its legal nature and the historical development, and the analysis of the wideness of the territorial seas issues by the method of identifying the internal and external borders of the territorial seas followed by the domestic law arrangements within Turkey.Within the second part, the definition of the innocent passage right and its legal nature, the innocence of the passage, especially the vessels benefiting from the innocent passage right in terms of warships, the obligations and powers of the coastal state are analysed. Flowingly the domestic legal arrangement of Turkey are assessed and the innocent passage right has been discusses in terms of the Aegean issue.Key Words:1.Territorial seas2.International Law of the Seas3.Innocent Passage Right4.Aegean Issue5.Warships