The Bosporus: shipping, the Montreux Convention and Black Sea security, and Istanbul on both shores of the strait
On the morning of 28 October 2026 the defence ministers of Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria sat down at the Boyana residence in Sofia to talk about the war on merchant shipping in the western Black Sea. While they were talking, three sea drones hit the container ship Contship Jet…
This is a status file for the Bosporus in 2026. It tracks what is moving through the strait this year and how Ankara is using the 1936 treaty that…
For most of the war, the Bosporus itself has been the quiet part of the Black Sea. Ships queued off Istanbul, paid their lighthouse fees and went…
On 13 February 2026 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to Boğaziçi University to open a dormitory. To receive him, the university shut its own campus. Classes…
For most of Istanbul's history the only way across the Bosporus was a boat. The first bridge opened on 30 October 1973, timed for the 50th…
The best way to understand the Bosporus is to get on the water with the people who live along it. Istanbul's ferries carry commuters between Europe…
Istanbul's waterfront neighbourhoods are often described as villages, and from a ferry they look like it: mosques by the water, wooden houses…
The Ottoman sultans moved down to the water in the 19th century. For nearly four hundred years they had ruled from Topkapı, a cluster of pavilions on…
At about ten past seven on the evening of 11 October 2026, the Maltese-flagged tanker Ivyan lost her engine in the middle of the Bosporus. The…
About 110 ships a day sail through the middle of Istanbul. Turkey's transport ministry counted 40,172 transits of the Bosporus in 2025, and another…
