Turkey will not make concessions on the Montreux Convention

Turkey is making it clear to its NATO partners that it does not intend to make concessions on the application of the Montreux Convention on the Black Sea straits.

This is reported by the pro-government newspaper Yeni Şafak.

The publication notes that the United States and France have long sought to extend their military presence to the Black Sea, but Ankara proceeds from the position that security in this maritime basin should be ensured only by the littoral countries.

"Officials in Ankara are sending a clear signal that they will not allow the deployment of naval elements [of non-littoral countries]. NATO is aware of this sensitivity [of Turkey]," Yeni Şafak notes in its commentary.

The Montreux Convention, signed in 1936, regulates navigation in the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits. Turkey has repeatedly stated that, on the basis of Article 19 of the convention, with the start of Russia's war against Ukraine it closed the straits zone to the passage of warships of the countries party to the conflict and of non-littoral states, in order to prevent a further increase in tensions in the Black Sea basin.