This is sort of fascinating as a history guy but somewhat terrifying as a human. It’s all very 1914ish. CNN (which is wildly outclassing the other cable nets on this story) just had a guy doing a live shot from a boat in the Bosphorus trailing a Ukrainian Navy vessel heading up the strait toward the Black Sea. This follows at least two Russian Navy vessels who did the same thing earlier in the day.
If you’re not familiar with the region, the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus are the two choke points along the body of water that connects the Mediterranean (and thus all the Oceans in the world) to the Black Sea. Holding these strategic points has been a huge deal for literally millennia. And it’s been particularly contested in the last few centuries, with Russia wanting an outlet into the Mediterranean, the Ottomans (and later Turkey) wanting to control transit through between the two seas.
There were a series of treaties and international agreements hashed out and then scrapped after World War I trying to balance international access – not least for military vessels – and Turkish sovereignty. I believe transit is still governed by the Montreux Convention.
If you’re a World War I buff, this is where Winston Churchill’s career almost ended and tens of thousands of British, French, Australians, New Zealanders and Turks died in horrific conditions when the Allies tried to ‘force the strait’, push their way up the Dardenelles in a bid to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war, connecting up with their Russian allies and thus break the stalemate in eastern France.
Ancient Troy was also near the mouth of the Dardanelles, if you’re keeping score.
To be clear, I don’t think this development is a cause for alarm any more than any of the other stuff that has happened in the last few days. But it just drives home how drenched in history this area is and, specifically, a lot of bad history when it comes to the collisions of Great Powers whether it’s in the 20th century, the 19th century or 30 centuries ago.
