If the Istanbul Canal is successfully completed, this project will be perhaps the main and most significant achievement of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, it will not be easy to complete what has been started, since the attempt to create a twin brother of the Bosphorus leads to the emergence of abundant criticism of Turkey from both its own population and many other powers. Why is everyone so disliked by the promising Istanbul Canal?
Just a little bit of history …
“Do you know what the matter is? Most likely it's about money,”- this simple folk wisdom works almost always flawlessly. However, for a better understanding of the issue, it is worth visiting from afar. It just so happened that in the First World War, the future Turkey - the Ottoman Empire was not lucky to fight on the wrong side. The war ended, the triple alliance lost, everything went very badly in the Turkish state, and even the Entente countries pounced on it with various demands. The goals of the demands were the same as always in world politics: to put the opponent in a stall, to grab a fatter piece and to make sure that the competitor did not think about anything for a long time but paying reparations.
In 1923, in Switzerland, on the initiative of England, France and Italy, the Lausanne Conference was held, where a peace treaty was signed between the former Entente and Turkey. Many documents were signed at the conference, but one of the most important ones concerned the position of the straits, primarily the Bosphorus. It was adopted under pressure from the Entente countries. In fact, the Lausanne Convention required the creation of a demilitarized zone around the straits, but at the same time (with minor restrictions) allowed the passage through the Bosphorus not only civilian, but military vessels of all powers. All this put the Black Sea countries, including the young Soviet Union, in an extremely uncomfortable position. The most important thing was that Turkey was de facto deprived of its sovereignty over the strait. He ceased to be her territory.
In 1936, Switzerland hosted a new conference on the status of the straits - the Montreux Conference. According to its results, the Turks managed to achieve the return of sovereignty over the Bosphorus. The country received the right to remilitarize the strait zone, but the most important thing was that although the Bosphorus remained accessible to civilian ships of all countries of the world, serious restrictions were imposed on the passage of warships. It became a little more difficult for the navy to sail through the strait, in addition, now only the smallest ships could pass here and only after prior notification from the Turkish authorities. All this hurt the position of Britain and France and strengthened the positions of Turkey and the Soviet Union.
And despite a number of incidents, the Montreux Convention continues to operate to this day.
They steal our grandmothers, Recep! Do something already
The Turkish President has been promoting the Istanbul Canal project for several years. If everything works out, then it will become a real construction site of the decade. The question is: why do you need to pump billions of dollars into digging the earth, when there is a beautiful natural strait nearby? The answer is money. Much money. And the culprit is the very Montreux convention.
The fact is that the agreement signed back in 1936 recognizes the Bosphorus as a natural formation, and therefore prohibits Turkey from using it for commercial purposes. In simple words: the Turks have no right to charge merchant ships for passage through the Bosphorus. Which puts the country in an extremely uncomfortable position in relation to those states where today there are such man-made ship arteries. For example, like the Suez Canal in Egypt.
The Suez Canal is today the second most important source of income for Egypt. Merchant ships pay about $ 10 per ton of cargo. It is easy to calculate that if the ship passes at least 100 thousand tons, one single voyage will bring the state of the pharaohs “only” 1 million dollars. The average income of Egypt from the Suez Canal per year is in the amount of 4-5 billion dollars. And now the main thing: traffic through the Bosphorus in Turkey is 2-3 times higher than traffic through Suez! How much money flows from the hands of Turkey, like water flowing from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara.
Therefore, under the pretext of the congestion of the Bosphorus, the Turks hope to build an additional canal through which it will be possible to pass merchant ships for money with a clear conscience, receiving profit for this both to the budget and to the pockets of the right people (yes, this is how it works in life). It is quite obvious that in the event of the completion of the Istanbul Canal, the Montreux Convention will not apply to it. And they will be guaranteed to swim through the paid channel, because everyone will want to go through the problematic section of the route as quickly as possible. After all, time is money.
What don't you do - everything is bad
The ships will go faster, the Turkish budget will receive more money. Some pluses! Why does everyone so dislike the idea of building a new canal? Well, first of all, you can't just sit and watch someone other than you make money. All this is a very serious business and there is too much tangle of interests and contradictions around the channel. The project has supporters and opponents both in Turkey itself and abroad.
However, the most important thing for Russia in this matter is the potential circumvention of the very Montreux Convention. The emergence of such a channel could make possible the legal entry of large NATO ships into the Black Sea. Today, the alliance can sail ships with a total tonnage of no more than 45 thousand tons in the inland sea once every 21 days. All this cannot please Russia, as well as the gradual general strengthening of Turkey as a regional power in the last two decades.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about tanker Knock Nevis: a huge ship, against which the Titanic looks like a boat.