The Background of Russia's Claims of the Turkish Straits

Yıl 1964, Cilt: 28 Sayı: 111, 459 - 504, 20.07.1964

Jacob Coleman Hurewıtz

Öz

The USSR placed on the agenda of the Big -Three wartime conference at Yalta in February 1945 the question of the Turkish Straits, a 200-mile-long natural waterway connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. Of this waterway less than 60 miles, the Bosphorus corning from the Black Sea and the Dardanelles going to the Aegean, are true straits, joined by the inland Sea of Marmara. Ever since 1841 the transit of naval vessels through the Straits has been regulated by international agreement. The latest regime was established by a convention signed at Montreux in July 1936, authorizing Turkey (Articles 20 and 21) to remilitarize the strategic waterway and, if it were "threatened with imminent danger of war" or actually engaged in war, at its discretion to permit or disallow the passage of warships through the Straits.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Second World War, Turkish Straits, Russia's Claims, Soviet Government, Yalta, Stalin, Churchill