Turkey officially recognized on Sunday the “state of war” between Russia and Ukraine, which authorizes it, under the Montreux Convention of 1936, to limit the access of the two belligerents to the Dardanelles Strait, which opens towards the Black Sea.
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“The situation in Ukraine has turned into war. Turkey will implement, transparently, all the provisions of the Montreux Convention,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Casuvoglu said in an interview with the CNN-Turkey channel.
From the beginning of the Russian aggression against his country, the Ukrainian ambassador in Ankara, Vasyl Bodnar, called on Turkey to close the Dardanelles Strait and the Bosphorus to Russian ships.
Although an ally of Kiev and a member of NATO, Turkey did not immediately respond to this request.
Ankara controls access to the Black Sea through the Treaty of Montreux, signed in 1936, which guarantees the free movement of merchant ships in peacetime and grants it the right to block warships in the event of conflict, in particular if Turkey itself is threatened and unless these ships have to return to their bases.
Mr. Cavusoglu had previously indicated that the “experts (were) studying whether there is a state of war from the legal point of view”.
In an interview published Friday by the Turkish daily Hurriyet, the minister explained that “Turkey applies the Treaty of Montreux: measures can be taken against the belligerents of a conflict in which Turkey does not take part”.
“Turkey can stop the transit of warships through the strait. But it must also authorize the ships of the belligerents to return to their bases if they so request. Our experts are studying whether there is a state of war from a legal point of view. If so, the process will start,” he said.
At least six Russian warships and a submarine have passed through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles in the past two weeks, returning from the Mediterranean.