In his greatest need, the Ukrainian war president Volodymyr Zelenskij had deliberately put Turkey in a predicament. Ankara has promised to block the Bosphorus passage for Russian warships, the Ukrainian head of state tweeted after a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Turkey initially denied the alleged promise to Ukraine, which is good friends with it, in diplomatic terms. Ankara maintains good relations with Kiev and Moscow. But then both the Turkish foreign minister and Erdoğan’s spokesman made it clear that Ankara sees the Russian army’s supposed “special operation” in Ukraine for exactly what it is: an open war. And with that, the Kremlin is now threatening that its warships will no longer be allowed to sail through the straits of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles.
Frigates, landing ships, supply ships or submarines with the blue and white flag of the Russian Navy are part of everyday life on Istanbul’s Golden Horn. Moscow’s warships sail through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus up into the Black Sea or in the opposite direction down into the Mediterranean. This is due to the geography: from the Black Sea, the Russian fleet has no other access to the Mediterranean Sea and the oceans.
According to the Treaty of Montreux, fleets from neighboring countries that are at war cannot cross the straits
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said after Zelenskij’s tweet that a blocking of the Bosphorus, Marmara Sea and Dardanelles, which connect the Black Sea with the Mediterranean Sea as a trio passage, is imminent in the event of war Treaty of Montreux precisely regulated. You stick to that. “Turkey can stop the passage of warships through the straits,” said the minister. “But the treaty also says something else: if the ships of the warring countries return to their home ports, it must be allowed.”
First you have to determine whether there really is a war under international law, Ankara’s foreign minister said at first: “Our experts are checking that.” Moscow calls the attack on the neighboring country a kind of “special operation” to keep the peace, but this is unlikely to hold up under international law. Apparently, however, Ankara is now leaning towards the Ukrainian position: Erdoğan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted on Sunday that the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict was “a war”.
“Turkey can stop the passage of warships through the straits”: Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu.
(Photo: Eranga Jayawardena/AP)
The Treaty of Montreux regulates passage through the Straits. If Turkey is at war, she can block the passage at will – both for international merchant shipping and for warships. If Ankara is not involved in a war between other Black Sea states, other rules apply. Then the passage remains open. However, ships from the fleets of the neighboring countries that are at war can no longer navigate through the Bosphorus or Dardanelles. No matter in which direction.
The passages of the Russian Navy are demonstrations of power
Accordingly, neither Ukrainian nor Russian warships are currently allowed to pass – unless they want to go to their home port. Because the Montreux Treaty with its 29 articles allows this. According to this, however, only ships from the Russian Black Sea Fleet – one of the five Russian naval forces – are still allowed to go into the Black Sea. In the case of Ukraine, this is less important: it hardly has any warships. Russian ships are no longer allowed in the Mediterranean. But that would be an affront: the Kremlin supplies its troops in Syria via this route.
The Montreux Treaty is an afterbirth of the First World War. It was closed in 1936 and gave back sovereignty over the roughly 303-kilometer passage to the young Turkish Republic, the successor to the Ottoman Empire that was destroyed in the aftermath of World War II. It is Ankara’s most important geopolitical pawn.
But Russia sees itself as a Black Sea supremacy. It usually sends far more warships through the passage than other states: the passages are a show of force. If NATO now wants to move more warships to deter Moscow, the pressure is likely to increase. Turkey is a NATO state, but access by warships from non-residing countries is also regulated in the treaty. Only smaller ships are allowed – no aircraft carriers – and the stay in the Black Sea is limited to 21 days.