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The construction of a new shipping channel parallel to the Bosphorus will bring great economic benefits to the Russian Federation and does not bode well for Washington hawks who dream of sending aircraft carriers to the Black Sea. The history of the issue versed edition Ukraine.ru
The first reports of plans to connect the Black and Marmara Seas with the new channel appeared in 2011, they were voiced by Recep Erdogan , then Prime Minister of Turkey. According to his statements, the new channel was to significantly relieve traffic through the Bosphorus. In 2013, the Ministry of Transport of the Turkish Republic began to prepare a theoretical justification of the project. It took on its final form in 2018. In November 2018, trial drilling was conducted on the canal route and potential environmental risks were assessed. They were minimal. Later, on January 16, Transport Minister Ahmet Arslan announced his intention to announce a tender for the construction of the canal.
Istanbul Island
According to the construction plan, the new channel will be built parallel to the Bosphorus. It will pass from the Sea of ??Marmara across Lake Küçükçekmece, the Sazlidere reservoir and reach the Black Sea, rounding Istanbul from the west, effectively turning the European part of Istanbul into an island. It is planned that the length of the channel will be 45 kilometers, width up to 400 meters, depth - 25 meters. To complete the construction of the channel should by 2023. Its capacity will be 160 ships per day - as much as the Bosphorus passes every day. During the year there are 53 thousand ships.
Putin and Erdogan together followed the completion of the construction of the "Turkish stream"
Putin and Erdogan together followed the completion of the construction of the "Turkish stream"
© RIA Novosti, Mikhail Klimentev | Go to the photo bank
According to the Turkish authorities, the new channel, the cost of construction of which is estimated at $ 50 billion, will be followed by all cargo ships. According to the Turkish authorities, the channel will allow transport companies to save approximately $ 1.4 billion, thanks to a reduction in vessel idle time in anticipation of pilotage. Additional justification for the need to build the canal was the risk of environmental disasters due to a possible oil spill in the Bosphorus, the shallowing of the Bosphorus and the reduction of the load on the strait, which allegedly hardly cope with the flow of ships going through it.
But is it really? The minimum depth of the Bosphorus is 33 meters, and its width ranges from 700 to 3700 meters, which is no comparison with the characteristics of the new channel, so the Turkish side’s assertion about the need to unload the Bosphorus by building a narrower and shallow channel sounds doubtful. Environmental risks in the construction of the canal, too, can not be ignored, because the risk of collision of vessels in a narrow waterway is much higher than in the wide and deep Bosphorus.
Black Sea Toll Road
Shipping between the Black and Mediterranean Sea is carried out through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, the legal regime of which is established by the 1936 Montreux Convention. According to the norms of this document, Turkey has no right to charge a fee from vessels for passing through the said straits. The only exceptions are pilotage and navigation maintenance charges. The payment amounts are set forth directly in the convention, they are an order of magnitude lower than the amounts that Turkey could charge for passage through the straits, if it had the right to do so. However, the rules of the Montreux Convention do not apply to the straits and channels that are not listed in it, so the new channel "Istanbul" will be paid.
Bosporus will close bureaucracy
The cost of passing ships through sea canals depends on various factors: precipitation, tonnage, height of deck cargo, application time, timeliness of the vessel’s approach. For example, the price of passage through the Suez Canal is from $ 8 to $ 12 per ton, and the average cost is more than $ 160 thousand, and for a heavy ship it can reach $ 1 million. Therefore, Turkey’s desire to get a new channel, the construction of which will cost it the astronomical sum is quite justified, because, according to preliminary calculations, the investment will pay off after 15 years, and the channel will serve the Turkish budget forever.
In this regard, the situation around the Bosporus can seriously worsen. Turkey, according to the Montreux Convention, has no right to impede navigation through the Bosphorus in peacetime, and in wartime the prohibition will apply only to warring parties, including Turkey itself. Therefore, the Turks have no right to prohibit passage through the Bosphorus and send the entire cargo traffic to the paid channel. But Turkey has leverage in terms of regulating shipping through the Black Sea straits. In 1994, Turkey introduced additional rules for the passage of merchant ships through the Bosphorus Strait: all ships with a length of 150 to 200 meters must notify the Turkish authorities about their approach to the Black Sea straits in 24 hours, and ships from 200 to 300 meters in draft exceeding 15 m in 48 hours. Therefore, nothing prevents Turkey from increasing the specified notification time or creating artificial queues at the entrances to the Bosphorus, arguing that they require navigation safety and pilotage expectations. But the average cost of a ship’s idle day reaches $ 20,000, as it includes crew wages, fuel and fines for disrupting cargo delivery times.
However, there is an obvious plus in the issue of building a new shipping channel. In the event of a compromise on the cost of passage through the Istanbul channel between Turkey and other Black Sea countries, including Russia and Ukraine, the throughput of the Black Sea straits will significantly increase and, as a result, the freight turnover of the seaports of the region will increase. The latter may help to increase the attractiveness of the Black Sea ports - a new transit hub between China and the EU countries.
Erdogan received congratulations on the success of the local elections from Putin
Erdogan received congratulations on the success of the local elections from Putin
© RIA Novosti, Sergey Guneev | Go to the photo bank
However, news of the start of construction by Turkey of a new channel to the Black Sea caused a wave of jubilation in the radically-minded "expert" media space of Ukraine, which announced in advance a possible passage of American attack aircraft carrier groups to the shores of Crimea.
Montreux is in the details
At first glance, the construction of a new channel may indeed seem like a good opportunity to circumvent the restrictions on the transit of warships of non-Black Sea powers to the Black Sea, including the United States, seeking to escalate tension around the shores of the Crimea and the Kerch Strait. But professional experts who are familiar with the geography and text of the Montreux Convention in detail, consider such statements as illiteracy and legal nihilism.
Thus, according to the second paragraph of the Preamble of the Montreux Convention, the straits that limit the passage of warships into the Black Sea are understood as the Dardanelles, the Sea of ??Marmara and the Bosphorus. Therefore, to get into the Black Sea from the Mediterranean, the US aircraft carrier, in addition to the Bosphorus, will first have to overcome the Dardanelles, and then the Sea of ??Marmara. And as mentioned above, the passage of warships of non-Black Sea states with a displacement of more than 15 thousand tons is prohibited through all these water barriers. The entire US aircraft carrier fleet falls under these restrictions, except for the battleships, which are no longer in service.
Due to these international legal restrictions, US aircraft carriers cannot even get closer to the Sea of ??Marmara, where the construction of the Istanbul Channel begins.
In the existing system of international maritime law, the Black Sea is reliably protected from the escalation of tension and the threat of US force, and the only channel that can be built to circumvent the restrictions of the Montreux Convention on the passage of aircraft carriers must be through Greece and Bulgaria, which, given the mountainous terrain will cost more to build hundreds of new aircraft carriers. |
