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DE RUEHIT #0115/01 0460956
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FM AMCONSUL ISTANBUL
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 6607
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHDA/AMCONSUL ADANA PRIORITY 2293

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ISTANBUL 000115 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: EWWT EPET SENV TU
SUBJECT: TURKISH STRAITS AT CAPACITY 
 
ISTANBUL 00000115  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
¶1. Summary:  On February 11, Capt. Salih Orakci, General 
Director of the Coastal Safety and Salvage Administration 
briefed A/S Sullivan and members of the EPC delegation on the 
hazards of navigating the Turkish Straits and the operation 
of the Vessel Traffic System (VTS) in the Bosphorous Straits. 
 Capt. Tuncay Cehreli, Manager of the Istanbul VTS Center, 
and Dr. Nilufer Oral, maritime law expert at Istanbul Bilgi 
University, also assisted with the briefing.  Orakci told 
Sullivan that the Straits were currently at capacity.  Poor 
quality crew aboard a large proportion of ships combined with 
the inability to mandate pilots and/or tug boats for 
transiting ships meant that a catastrophic accident could 
occur "at any time."  End Summary. 
 
¶2. EEB A/S Dan Sullivan and members of the U.S. delegation to 
the third U.S. - Turkey Economic Partnership Commission 
delegation requested a briefing on the environmental and 
safety challenges facing the Government of Turkey as it copes 
with a large volume of oil tanker and other hazardous cargo 
traffic through the Turkish Straits.    On February 11, Capt. 
Salih Orakci, General Director of the Coastal Safety and 
Salvage Administration, and Capt. Tuncay Cehreli, Manager of 
the Istanbul VTS Center, briefed the group on their agency's 
efforts to administer safe passage of the straits. 
 
¶3. The Turkish Straits are 164 nautical miles (NM) in length, 
stretching from the Black Sea to the Aegean.  The Bosphorous 
(Istanbul Strait) comprises 17 NM and the Canakkale Strait 37 
NM.  The remaining 110 NM span the distance between the two 
major straits in the Sea of Marmara.  The Vessel Traffic 
System (VTS) system, purchased from Lockheed Martin, has been 
fully operational since December 2003.  The VTS system has 
assisted in gathering information about ships that transit 
the Straits as well as in improving the safety of navigation 
and protecting the marine environment by reducing the 
frequency and seriousness of maritime accidents, according to 
Cehreli. 
 
¶4. From 2003 to 2006 the annual number of ships transiting 
the straits has hovered just under 55,000 with approximately 
10,000 of those carrying hazardous cargo, a level that both 
Orakci and Cehreli argue represents the full capacity of the 
Straits.  In 2006 10,153 vessels carrying 143,452,401 MT of 
hazardous cargo transited the Bosphorous.  This included over 
95 million MT of crude oil, almost 40 million MT of refined 
petroleum product, 4.5 million MT of LPG and 3.5 million MT 
of chemicals.  Over 98% of vessels carrying hazardous cargo 
through the straits are southbound from Black Sea ports and 
over half of these are loaded at Novorossiysk, a port which 
accounted for 903 tankers carrying 75 million metric tons of 
hazardous cargo in 2006.  By contrast, Cehreli noted that in 
2006 the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline carried 8.9 million 
MT of crude oil or approximately 80 tanker loads.  He 
acknowledged that BTC began operation partway through the 
year and was not yet operating at full capacity but argued 
that even at capacity BTC would have no real effect on 
straits traffic, which has a capacity of 100 million MT of 
crude oil annually.  Noting that from a technical perspective 
pipelines are safer than maritime transport, Orakci stressed 
the need for additional alternate routes to take the pressure 
off the Turkish Straits. 
 
¶5. The Bosphorous is one of the most crowded, difficult and 
potentially dangerous waterways in the world.  Strong 
currents and counter currents, sharp turns and the need to 
course correct twelve times during the transit make passage 
hazardous even in good weather conditions.  However, although 
the International Maritime Organization strongly recommends 
the use of a pilot in the Turkish Straits, under the 
provisions of the 1936 Montreaux Convention and the 1982 Law 
of the Sea Agreement pilotage is voluntary, Cehreli 
explained. As a result only 36% of transit vessels take a 
pilot in the Bosphorous and less than 2% use an escort tug. 
According to Prof. Nilufer Oral of Bilgi University, even 
though the Turkish Straits are an international waterway, the 
current maritime law regime permits the Turkish Government to 
enforce certain measures to maintain safety.  These measures 
include provisions requiring vessels to utilize adequate 
radio and navigational aids, separation and overtaking 
requirements designed to avoid c 
ollisions and other precautionary measures such as daylight 
only transits for vessels carrying hazardous cargo. 
 
¶6. Despite these precautions failures are a frequent event in 
the Bosphorous.  On average a vessel suffers a mechanical or 
navigational failure every 2.5 days.  More alarmingly, at 
least one vessel greater than 200M in length fails every year 
in the Bosphorous.  In 1998 the Romanian tanker Independanta 
collided with a general cargo vessel at the lower end of the 
Bosphorous causing a massive explosion that killed 43 people 
as well as a major oil spill.  In February 2006, the Liberian 
flagged Genmar Star carrying 86,000 MT of kerosene lost its 
 
ISTANBUL 00000115  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
rudder and came within 60 meters of running ashore at the 
historic Dolmabahce Palace.  Genmar Star was carrying a pilot 
who helped anchor the ship while VTS Center staff dispatched 
tugboats to arrest the vessel's drift toward shore, thus 
averting a major accident.  Orakci told Sullivan that the 
next major accident in the straits is more a question of if 
than when, and that he worries every time his telephone rings 
in the early morning (when the majority of hazardous cargo tr 
ansits occur.)  Orakci argued that poorly trained personnel 
were at least as much of a threat as aged vessels or poor 
equipment.  Cehreli noted that a collision involving two 
small general cargo vessels could cause a major accident if 
it occurs just in front of a fully loaded oil tanker. 
 
¶7.  A/S Sullivan did not clear this message before departing. 
JONES