Tag: Black Sea MoU

It would be designed to handle the world's largest supertankers Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appears to see the construction of a canal near Istanbul that would link the Black and Marmara seas as a lynchpin of his political legacy. But political experts and economists are viewing the project with caution, worrying that it could have a destabilizing impact on existing energy and security arrangements.At a project presentation in April, featuring techno music and flashing lights, Prime Minister Erdoğan predicted that his dream project will outshine the Panama and Suez canals. It will be, he said, one of the biggest projects of the century.In truth, the scale of the planned Istanbul canal is well short of both the Suez and Panama routes, but at 48 kilometers long, it would still represent a mammoth engineering feat. The canal, to be dug just west of Istanbul, would provide an alternative to the Bosphorus waterway for accessing the Mediterranean Sea.The Bosphorus, which bisects Istanbul, is the only southern sea route to world markets for Black Sea countries Georgia, Ukraine, Russia and Romania. In 2009, according to Turkish Coast Guard figures, over 50,000 ships, including more than 9,000 tankers carrying 145 million tons ...