Straits Question

European history

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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 government. Seeking to protect itself against attack from the south, Russia, after defeating the Turks in 1833, exacted from them an agreement to close the straits to warships of non-Black Sea powers at Russia’s request (the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi). This agreement was cancelled by the London Straits Convention of July 13, 1841, in which all the major European powers subscribed to the rule that no non-Turkish warships might cross the straits during peacetime.

Britain and France, as allies of Ottoman Turkey, did send their fleets through the straits to attack Russia during the Crimean War (1853–56). The 1841 convention remained in force until it was reversed by the post-World War I Lausanne Convention (July 24, 1923), which allowed free passage for all warships. This satisfied neither Soviet Russia nor the new Turkish Republic and was revised by the Montreux Convention (July 20, 1936), which reestablished Turkey’s full right to fortify the straits (typically referred to as the Turkish Straits) and restricted access by navies of non-Black Sea states; this agreement was never abrogated.