Erdogan's new channel to the Black Sea. Is there any reason to panic?
On Saturday, April 3, 103 retired admirals of the Turkish Navy published an open letter condemning the ruling Justice and Development Party for Islamizing the country and calling for “no discussion” about the Montreux Convention.
“The Montreux Convention is the main security document of the Black Sea countries and the convention that makes the Black Sea a sea of peace. This convention gives Turkey the right not to enter into war on the side of one of the warring parties without its desire; this allowed it to maintain neutrality in World War II,” the authors of the appeal emphasize.
The Montreux Convention, in force since November 9, 1936, which consolidated Turkey's sovereignty over the straits, guarantees freedom of passage through the straits for commercial and fishing vessels both in peacetime and in wartime, but strictly regulates the rules of passage for warships of the Black Sea and non-Black Sea states. “Ours”, the Black Sea ones, can escort any ships in peacetime, while for warships from outside the class, tonnage and time of stay in the Black Sea are limited. Restrictions also apply to ships carrying humanitarian aid belonging to non-Black Sea states.
Retired Turkish admirals express concern that the future Istanbul Canal will turn the Black Sea into a gateway for warships from outside, undermining the region's stability.
Official Ankara called the open letter from the retired admirals “treasonous,” the Turkish President’s chief PR man, Fahrettin Altun, compared the signatories to “pawns of foreign powers removed from the board” and a “fifth column,” and Vice President Fuat Oktay called the retired naval commanders “lovers of military negotiations.”
According to the Anadolu news agency, the Turkish Prosecutor General's Office became involved in the “admirals’ case.” Detentions began. Last Sunday, 10 people were detained and 14 more arrest warrants were issued for opposition admirals. Four could not be found, so the Prosecutor General's Office spoke to the media, inviting those hiding to surrender to the police. The retired military men who signed the open letter are accused of conspiring to violate the constitutional order and undermine the security of the state.
It should be recalled that since 1969, when Cyprus joined the Montreux Convention, its participants were: the USSR, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Turkey, Australia, Great Britain, France and Japan.
After 1991, Russia became a party to the convention as the successor to the USSR, but breakaway Ukraine and Georgia are not parties to the agreement.
The United States, as always, remains committed to its opinion, which boils down to the fact that the US Navy should have the right of unhindered passage anywhere - be it the Black Sea or Lake Baikal.
However, the United States could not ignore the provisions of the convention without getting into a major military-political scandal, and therefore was forced, wincing and grimacing, to comply with other people’s rules.
However, now in the United States they are openly rubbing their hands. Among Turkey's neighbors, such as Greece and Cyprus, the creation of an artificial strait on the outskirts of Istanbul causes a lot of foreboding, as, indeed, among states that are well aware of the consequences of Turkish expansion.
As for Erdogan, this statesman radiates inflexibility and declares that the Istanbul Canal will definitely be dug, while making reassuring statements that the construction of the canal is of purely commercial interest, with the aim of “relieving” shipping in the Bosphorus Strait, as well as passage through it “environmentally unfriendly” ships, such as oil tankers.
A number of observers do not really believe this, since online archives easily contain statements by Erdogan, who has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the Lausanne Treaty, the continuation of which was the Montreux Convention. The President of Turkey, according to him, is not yet ready to withdraw from the agreement on the straits and the regional status of the Black Sea, but he publicly announces that Turkey is not satisfied with some provisions of the convention, and therefore the constitution of the state will be changed.
While Turkey is discussing legal amendments, it is de facto already violating a number of provisions of the Montreux Convention, interfering with the passage of convention courts.
For example, against the backdrop of the Russian-Turkish crisis of 2015–2016, associated with the Russian Su-24 front-line bomber shot down by the Turks in Syria, the Turkish side repeatedly detained Russian ships in its ports and straits under the pretext of various formal violations. And even after the warming of relations, Turkey from time to time restricts the right to free passage of ships, explaining its actions by the environmental situation in the area of the straits.
Thus, in February 2019, there were serious delays in permitting oil tankers traveling from Novorossiysk to EU ports and back to pass through the Black Sea straits. Ankara cited “unfavorable weather conditions” as the reason for the delay.
The scandal with the arrests of Kemalist admirals who disagree with Islamization and changes to the Turkish constitution is growing and spreading. Many observers predict destabilization of the Black Sea region along with the commissioning of the “Erdogan Canal.” The consequences are mentioned in the form of Turkey's withdrawal from the Montreux Convention and the use of an “unconventional” channel as a tool for economic blackmail and warming relations with the Americans.
To understand the problem, it is necessary to get answers to two main questions: will the Istanbul Canal be built at all, and is Turkey really ready to withdraw from the Montreux Convention.
The first issue is murky. The canal construction plan is currently in the public consultation phase, and it's unclear how long it will remain under discussion. The project itself doesn't even exist on paper, but corruption scandals involving Erdoğan's associates buying up land allocated for the construction are raging. It's entirely possible that the project could be undone in its early stages by the greed of the individuals and organizations involved, as there's ample historical evidence to support.
For example, the tsarist government, which conceived the construction of subways in Moscow and St. Petersburg, was faced with the problem of paying astronomical compensation to landowners. Clutching their heads at the numbers they received, officials quickly pushed the project into the back burner. Subways in the capitals, as we know, were implemented, but under a different system and different economic relations.
In itself, the construction of a 150 km canal is an expensive and slow task, which gives time to prepare for most of the imaginable troubles if fears are justified and the project becomes not only commercial and environmental.
On the other hand, Turkey’s desire to change a number of provisions of the Montreux Convention is a much more realistic prospect than the construction of a still illusory canal on the outskirts of Istanbul.
The fact is that the Montreux Convention, signed in 1936, was designed for a 20-year validity period, but was extended automatically, since none of the parties expressed a desire to terminate it.
It is noteworthy that Turkey remained faithful to the spirit and letter of the signed law even during the Cold War, limiting the passage of American warships through the straits, to the great displeasure of the “world hegemon.”
In fact, the commissioned Istanbul canal cannot become the killer of the Montreux Convention, since it is not able to change the status of the Black Sea as a regional one. Let’s say Turkey, under the guise of unfavorable weather conditions or some other force majeure, gives the go-ahead for NATO ships to enter the Black Sea through a new channel. And what? The current restrictions still remain in force, since they were not established only by Turkey.
On the other hand, Turkey also cannot completely abandon the implementation of the convention, because this would entail a number of unpredictable consequences, if not chaos in shipping through the straits.
It is interesting that the topic of the imminent exit (as soon as the Istanbul channel is built) from the Montreux Convention is actively promoted by the former “permanent representative in the ARC” Boriska Babin, developing before the dumbfounded public troubles for Russia that have not yet happened. They say that Turkey needed the convention while it was weak. Now Türkiye is strong, so all agreements are in the firebox!
Having fallen out with its NATO allies and the United States, Türkiye is not so strong. Its expansionist ambitions are strong, but things in the economy and geopolitics are far from brilliant. In particular, the Turkish lira is one of the world leaders in terms of depreciation rates, and a military alliance has already emerged in the Mediterranean to counter Turkish expansion.
Most likely, Turkey will indeed strive to abandon a number of clauses of the agreement that are unfavorable for it.
According to the convention, the initiative to change one or more of its provisions can only come from states that have signed the document. The decision on the appropriate review must be made in most cases unanimously by convening, if necessary, a special Conference (once every five years, the next one should be held before the end of 2021). Some amendments concerning the total tonnage of warships and vessels of non-Black Sea states simultaneously in transit through the straits (Article 14) or directly in the Black Sea (Article 18) can be adopted with the consent of “3/4 of the contracting parties”, including 3/4 of the Black Sea states, including Turkey.
From which it follows that the status of the Black Sea, both before and now, depends on all the Black Sea countries, and not just on Turkey and its ruling Erdogan.
Since 2014, in connection with the military-political crisis in Ukraine and the deterioration of Russian-American relations, the United States and its NATO allies have been seeking to strengthen their military presence in the Black Sea zone. As a result, the number of visits by warships of the alliance countries (mainly the American Navy) to the Black Sea has increased significantly.
At the same time, the number of exercises involving NATO member states in the Black Sea region, as well as Ukraine and Georgia, has increased. These exercises focus on the coherence of multinational naval task forces and groups, serving various missions, and their deployment in sensitive areas. Based on the doctrine of comprehensive deterrence of Russia, best expressed by the motto "Drive the Russian bear back into its den," the Alliance is exploring the possibility of revising certain provisions of the Montreux Convention, specifically lifting the displacement restrictions on warships transiting the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, as well as extending their deployment periods in the Black Sea . This would improve the speed of NATO naval deployments on the bloc's southeastern flank and ensure the buildup of the naval force immediately off Russia's southern flank.
It would be useful to know exactly which clauses of the convention do not suit Erdogan, since they are the ones that make it possible to determine what kind of goodies the US Navy and NATO can count on in the Black Sea.
If Erdoğan is smart (and he clearly is), he should understand that changing the constitution and the provisions of the Montreux Convention plays not so much into Turkey's hands as into those of the United States and its allies , who are quietly cobbling together an anti-Turkish bloc in the Mediterranean and in the south, supporting the Kurds in Iraq and Syria. By overthinking things, Erdoğan is also gaining American "well-wishers" from the north – on the Black Sea. Along with Russia.
Practice shows that Turkey is a difficult neighbor, and Erdogan is an extremely difficult partner. Difficult does not mean incapable of negotiation. Through the forces of Russian diplomacy and the Aerospace Forces, it is possible to restrain Erdogan’s “proxies” in Syria, often with the hands of Erdogan himself, and turn the small victorious war in Karabakh into a short victory for the Baku-Ankara alliance. The military supply of S-400 systems managed to split the unity of NATO.
Therefore, it is necessary to continue to play on Turkey’s contradictions with NATO and its closest neighbors – Bulgaria and Romania. Moreover, a rapprochement between Turkey and the United States is not expected in the foreseeable future: the Americans’ refusal to extradite the dissident preacher Gulen is an insurmountable obstacle to the start of a “thaw.”
For Russia, the main thing is to preserve the current status of the Black Sea, and if the citizen Sultan is impatient to dig a canal and put his generals and admirals under arrest, then this is his personal business. Whatever the child amuses himself with...
Erdogan's New Canal to the Black Sea : Are There Reasons to Panic?