Turks Protest Nuclear Shipments in Narrow Bosphorus Strait

By Jon Gorvett

ISTANBUL, Turkey, June 25, 2001 (ENS) - With klaxons blaring and the smoke from dozens of distress flares billowing in the sea breeze, Turkish environmentalists marked the end of a week of protest Sunday, with a flotilla of small boats surrounding tankers in the waters off Istanbul.

The seaborne demo came after a decision by the Russian parliament on nuclear waste which many Turks believe dramatically increases the risks of environmental catastrophe in the Turkish Straits - the narrow Bosphorus and Dardanelles passages that separate Europe from Asia, and the Black Sea from the Mediterranean.

On June 6, Russian lawmakers voted to accept nuclear waste from other countries for reprocessing and disposal in the country's southern region of Mayak. This would likely mean a dramatic increase in nuclear waste materials transiting the Turkish Straits to Russia's Black Sea ports.

Fire following a 1994 collision of the tanker Nassia in the Bosporus Strait (Photo courtesy Turkish Maritime Pilots Association)

The Bosphorus already has an accident rate twice that of the Suez canal, and 30 times that of the Mississippi River.

But despite the fact that around 50,000 vessels transit every year, 6,000 carrying hazardous materials, there is no obligation on ships to carry a pilot or accept instructions from the Turkish Coast Guard. The reason is the post-World War One Treaty of Montreaux, which defined the Straits as international waters.

"Under the treaty," says Yuksel Ustun, the organizer of Sunday's boat protest on the Bosphorus and head of the environmental NGO Peace with Nature, "ships dont have to declare their cargo either, unless it is dangerous - but who is to check this? Under the treaty, ships don't even have to listen to Coast Guard requests."

What this means, according to Ustun, is that radioactive and other hazardous substances are regularly going through the Straits - and in the Bosphorus sometimes passing within a few hundred meters of densely populated urban areas.

"Nuclear waste is being brought through the Straits to the Black Sea thanks to this manipulation of the Montreaux Treaty," he says. In addition, Ustun claims that, "often in the past other countries would load up an old ship with hazardous materials, sail it through into the Black Sea and simply scuttle it there as a form of waste disposal. As the Black Sea littoral countries were until recently divided by the Cold War, there was never any real overall control."

Greenpeace Mediterranean co-ordinator Melda Keskin agrees. She says, "The majority of Russians do not want this hazardous or radioactive material either. A petition campaign in Moscow collected 2.1 million signatures against Russia accepting the nuclear waste. Under the Russian constitution, you need two million signatures to automatically trigger a national referendum on an issue. However, the government appointed referendum commission said that 600,000 of the signatures were invalid and threw out the petition."

In addition to protest demonstrations, the Turkish government has also reacted strongly to the Russian parliament's decision.

Maritime Undersecretary Ramazan Mirzaoglu told reporters last week in response to news of the Russian move that, "The Straits traffic is very important to the Black Sea countries and to Turkey. We will not give permission to dangerous passages that would delay that traffic."

Meanwhile, on his recent visit to Turkey, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov gave assurances that any nuclear waste shipped to Russia would be transported "according to current international standards."

This promise is unlikely to satisfy many Istanbulans who live along the densely crowded shores of the Bosphorus, one of the world's most historic waterways.