Straits Question News Today

Straits Question, in European diplomacy of the 19th and 20th centuries, a recurrent controversy over restrictions on the passage of warships through the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, the strategic straits connecting the Black Sea with the Aegean and Mediterranean seas. The straits were in Turkish territory, but when Russia gained control of the north shore of the Black Sea in the 18th century, Russian commercial vessels were accorded free passage through them by the Ottoman...

Turkey has canceled or postponed some planned NATO drills in the Black Sea amid tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

Turkey’s current chosen path of attempting to close the straits to all warships oversteps the Montreux Convention and risks replacing a long-standing set of rules vital to Turkish security with arbitrary restrictions.

Turkey has warned both Black Sea and non-Black Sea countries to not send warships to pass through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, country's Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu revealed.