List of maritime incidents in the Turkish Straits

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The list of maritime incidents in the Turkish Straits is a listing of major maritime casualties that occurred in the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits in Turkey. Shipping accidents are a threat to the maritime environment and to human life in the highly populated areas around the straits.

Contents

These two straits are among the busiest and most critical seaways in the world, and because of the Bosphorus's status as the narrowest strait used for international navigation, maritime disasters have been common.

Bosphorus

The Bosphorus is a narrow "S-shaped" channel of complex nature with several sharp turns and headlands, which prevent a proper look-out, and with changing currents. Such geographical and oceanographic conditions make the navigation, open to international shipping, very difficult and risky.

The density of maritime traffic in the Bosphorus, which links the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea, has increased elevenfold from around 4,400 ships passing annually in 1936, when the Montreux Convention was signed to regulate transit and navigation in the Straits, to an average of 48,000 vessels per year recently.[ clarification needed ] With 132 vessel transits daily, not including local traffic, it ranks second to the Malacca Straits in density.

During the period from 1953 to 2002, 461 maritime incidents occurred in the Istanbul Strait or in its southern entrance at the Marmara Sea. The majority were collisions. [1]

Dardanelles

Shipwrecks

The number of shipwrecks as of 2000 within the Turkish Straits is as follows (totaling 35):

Footnotes

  1. Shipping accidents: a serious threat for marineenvironment Archived 2014-08-23 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Noć kad je Bospor gori, author Marijan Žuvić
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Oral & Öztürk 2006, p. 140.
  4. 1 2 Oral & Öztürk 2006, p. 74.
  5. Newspaper Milliyet January 21, 1999 (in Turkish)
  6. Oral & Öztürk 2006, p. 75.
  7. Some of the major casualties in the Strait of Istanbul during the past years Archived 2007-10-09 at the Wayback Machine
  8. The Effect of the Dense Maritime Traffic On the Bosphorus Strait and Marmara Sea Pollution Archived 2006-12-11 at the Wayback Machine
  9. Ferries collision in Istanbul, 4 passengers injured, Maritime Bulletin, 4 May 2013
  10. Freighter Erhan Araz aground, Istanbul, Maritime Bulletin, 6 September 2013
  11. Freighter Captain Omar suffered engine failure in Bosphorus, Maritime Bulletin, 14 September 2013
  12. Freighter Anafarta intentionally grounded to avoid sinking, Bosphorus; Maritime Bulletin, 1 October 2013
  13. Volgo-Balt 193 disabled while transiting Bosphorus, 23 October 2013, Maritime Bulletin
  14. Tanker YM Miranda closed Bosphorus and broke two fiber cables, Istanbul; Maritime Bulletin, 29 October 2013
  15. LPG tanker Tala suffered engine failure in Bosphorus, Marine Bulletin, 13 November 2013

References