The Erdogan Canal threatens to turn the Black Sea into a walk-through yard
In 2011, the world media covered the statement of Erdogan, who at that time served as Prime Minister of Turkey, about plans to expand the Bosporus Strait.
According to the project, a new shipping canal should connect the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, turning Istanbul into an island.
The amount that the “Erdogan Canal” was supposed to cost was also mentioned - $10 billion, which would be affordable for Turkey, or even a little cheaper.
According to the plan, the width of the new water artery should be 150 m, the depth – 25 m. Such parameters will allow the Turks to pass up to 2.0 thousand ships per year through Bosphorus 85.
In his statement, Erdogan vowed that all necessary safety and environmental measures during the construction and operation of the canal will be observed.
The world community, which at that time was most worried about the events in Libya and the terrible death of its permanent leader, Colonel Gaddafi, reacted to the news from Ankara as a whim of an ambitious prime minister who had fallen into projectism.
In general, the statement was classified as a curiosity and was soon forgotten about.
Time passed, and in the second ten days of December 2019, Turkish President Erdogan again reminded the world of his intention to dig a canal between the Black and Marmara Seas, and apparently, he spoke about the implementation of the project quite seriously.
Experts who made comments in the media are mostly of the opinion that Turkey is most likely able to build the “Erdogan Canal”, despite the unfavorable economic indicators.
Of course, the additional cargo flow through Bosphorus 2.0 will allow Ankara to skim additional foam, but what, besides the benefits from the emergence of an additional transport corridor, does this powerful infrastructure project of Erdogan mean for all the Black Sea countries, including Russia?
The Turkish president draws the attention of the Black Sea countries to the fact that Bosporus 2.0 will make it safer for ships to navigate from sea to sea.
Indeed, emergency situations occur periodically in the existing Bosphorus.
For example, in 1979, the Romanian tanker Independent collided with another ship and caught fire, spilling a lot of oil into the strait. And on December 27, 2019, a message came that a dry cargo ship, leaving Odessa under the Liberian flag, had stuck into the shore in the strait.
All this, of course, is very informative, but the appearance of the second Bosporus under spells about universal benefit and benefit has a much more unpleasant underside.
A radical change in the navigation regime with the appearance of a backup at the good old Bosphorus, around which spears have been broken for centuries, leads to the abolition or revision of the international Montreux Convention.
The document was signed in 1936 in the Swiss town of Montreux on the initiative of Turkey itself, which intended to regain sovereignty over its Bosporus and Dardanelles straits.
Users of the straits were divided into Black Sea and non-Black Sea. The former can conduct their ships under conditions of simple notification to the relevant Turkish authorities. For the latter, serious restrictions have been introduced on the tonnage of warships and the length of their stay in the Black Sea.
Turkey, at the same time, has the right, in the event of a military threat, to block the passage of foreign military vessels.
The transfer of control over the Black Sea straits to Turkey was also beneficial for our country, since the 1936 Convention abolished the provisions of the Lausanne Treaty, according to which the straits were controlled by the international “Seven Boyars,” as a result of which the Black Sea had the status of a passage yard.
This situation, for example, was cleverly taken advantage of by the Kaiser’s Germany, which sent its cruisers to the Black Sea during the First World War.
During the signing of the contract, the Englishwoman, as always, had a special opinion. When the Montreux Convention was signed, London, at that time the capital of a great maritime power, demanded the right of unhindered access for its ships to the Black Sea without asking permission from Turkey.
During the preparation and holding of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the first half of the 1970s), the USA, Great Britain and Turkey made it clear that they were not inclined to change anything in the Montreux Convention and that returning to this issue could delay the signing of the final Act . Moscow chose not to extend these deadlines. And in 1991–1992, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Georgia unanimously joined the Convention, instead of the USSR.
However, by signing and ratifying the Convention, Great Britain did not violate it. One time the violator was the American frigate "Taylor" (with a displacement of 4100 tons), which was delayed during the Crimean spring in the Black Sea for more than 21 days under the pretext of "running aground in a Turkish port."
American frigate "Taylor".
Be that as it may, the Montreux Convention, which has survived to this day, cannot be considered fair to our country, as Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov repeatedly stated after the war.
During the Great Patriotic War, warships of Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the Black Sea, bypassing all the rules, and after the war, Turkey joined the NATO military-political alliance, as a result of which NATO assumed control over the straits in the event of a military conflict , not Turkey. In addition, a single supervisory body of the Black Sea states has not yet been created to oversee the implementation of the provisions of the Convention for ships of other states, as the USSR once proposed.
However, at the very least, in peacetime, apart from one-off incidents, the Convention fulfilled its deterrent role. And even during and after the Crimean crisis, the Black Sea was significantly plied by non-Black Sea ships, with a total displacement not exceeding 30 thousand tons, not counting the escort services of Romanian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian and Georgian warships, which is fully consistent with the requirements of the Convention on the Turkish Straits.
The appearance of Bosporus 2.0, not specified in the Convention, could lead to its revision and even cancellation, turning the Black Sea into a new passage for heavy ships and even NATO squadrons.
Taking into account the fact that the Bandera government, entrenched in Kiev, has repeatedly openly advocated for the abolition of the Montreux Convention, as well as Georgia’s keen desire to join NATO, even as a carcass or scarecrow, the revision or cancellation of the current Convention means that the major ports of Ukraine and Georgia will definitely be “registered” American, British and other warships of large tonnage and in large quantities for an indefinite period.
Kicking out these “dear guests” will be a huge problem, something that the ruling temporary workers and compradors who have settled in Georgia and Ukraine absolutely do not want to think about.
But that's not all. With the abolition of the Montreux Convention, the question of the passage of the Russian Black Sea Fleet through the straits will arise. No one can guarantee that the Black Sea Fleet will one day find itself locked in the Black Sea.
Not only does Russia not have a single ally in the Black Sea, but the problem of naval support for our military contingent in Syria will also arise, since the path to the Mediterranean from Murmansk, not to mention from the Pacific Ocean, is not close.
And we must constantly remember that Erdogan, who is running around with the pan-Turkic ideas of “Great Turan,” is not our friend. The maximum is a situational partner for whom it is beneficial to be not only a gas hub, but also a member of NATO. And recently, Ankara has been looking for opportunities to normalize relations with the United States. The abolition or revision of the Montreux Convention (and its new conditions will clearly not be in favor of Russia) will be a good gift and a subject of bargaining from an excellent starting position between Ankara and Washington.
And all the ensuing threats are by no means horror stories or alarmism, since our “unipolar” time is a season of nasty miracles, when, due to the selfishness of individual countries and political blocs, agreements and documents according to which the world lived in relative safety and security are mercilessly thrown into the dustbin of history. clear rules of the game over 70 years after the Second World War.
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