https://bosporus.org Bosporus.org en https://bosporus.org/black-sea-war-shipping-risk-bosporus/ 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 north or south as they always had. The danger began past Rumeli Feneri, at the strait's northern mouth. In 2026 that danger moved closer, grew deadlier and started to hit ships with no stake in the war at all. security shipping Black Sea Ukraine Russia Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/black-sea-war-shipping-risk-bosporus/ https://bosporus.org/bogazici-university-erdogan-appointed-rectors/ 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 went online. Students living in the dormitories were told to leave their rooms in the morning for security screening, and only event staff and residents of the women's dorm were let in. Police detained at least three people near a gate when students tried to hold up banners. The academics who have stood outside the rector's building every weekday… politics Erdoğan Istanbul history Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/bogazici-university-erdogan-appointed-rectors/ https://bosporus.org/bosporus-bridges-tunnels/ 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 anniversary of the Turkish Republic, and turned a city of two shores into one commuter market. There are now three road bridges and two tunnels, and between them they carry the daily traffic of Europe's largest city. Each one also carries a piece of Turkish politics. bridges and tunnels Istanbul politics Erdoğan Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/bosporus-bridges-tunnels/ https://bosporus.org/bosporus-ferry-cruise-guide/ 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 and Asia all day, for the price of a bus ticket, and from their decks you see the whole story this site covers: tankers queuing for the strait, the palaces of a bankrupt empire, the bridge renamed after a failed coup, and the fortress built to strangle Constantinople. ferries Istanbul Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/bosporus-ferry-cruise-guide/ https://bosporus.org/bosporus-neighbourhoods-guide/ Istanbul's waterfront neighbourhoods are often described as villages, and from a ferry they look like it: mosques by the water, wooden houses, fishing boats, tea gardens. They are also some of the most politically charged postcodes in Turkey. Here is the strait shore going north from the city centre, with what each place is and what it says about the country. neighbourhoods Istanbul history politics Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/bosporus-neighbourhoods-guide/ https://bosporus.org/bosporus-palaces-yali-mansions/ 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 the hill above the strait's mouth. Then, as the empire lost wars and territory, they spent fortunes on European-style palaces along the Bosporus shore. The buildings are still there, and they still say a lot about how Turkish rulers spend money. palaces history Istanbul Erdoğan Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/bosporus-palaces-yali-mansions/ https://bosporus.org/bosporus-pilotage-coastal-safety/ 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 100-metre ship was carrying about 6,000 tonnes of vegetable oil from Varna to Italy, and with no propulsion she began to drift towards the Asian shore at Kanlıca, its ferry pier and its old waterfront houses. The crew dropped anchor and stopped her short of the shore. Turkey's Coastal Safety authority sent the rescue tugs Kurtarma-7 and Kurtarma-11 and… shipping security Montreux Convention Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/bosporus-pilotage-coastal-safety/ https://bosporus.org/bosporus-ship-traffic-transit-rules/ 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 44,468 through the Dardanelles, for a combined record of 84,640 passages of the Turkish Straits. Through the Bosporus alone the ministry logged 203.7 million tons of dangerous cargo: crude oil, fuel, chemicals and gas, carried past waterfront homes, ferry piers and some of the most expensive real estate in Turkey. shipping Black Sea Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/bosporus-ship-traffic-transit-rules/ https://bosporus.org/bosporus-shipping-accidents-history/ On 7 April 2018 a Maltese-flagged bulk carrier, the Vitaspirit, lost steering while heading south through the Bosporus and drove straight into the Hekimbaşı Salih Efendi yalı at Kandilli, a waterfront mansion about two centuries old. Video of a bulk carrier crushing a historic waterfront house went round the world. Nobody was killed. But it showed, in one image, what Istanbul lives with every day: tens of thousands of ships a year passing a few hundred metres from people's homes, in a strait… shipping history security Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/bosporus-shipping-accidents-history/ https://bosporus.org/bosporus-strait-facts-currents-depth/ On a map the Bosporus looks like a river. It runs about 31 kilometres from the Black Sea at Rumeli Feneri and Anadolu Feneri down to the Sea of Marmara at Sarayburnu, the point below Topkapı Palace. It is 3.4 kilometres across at its widest, near Büyükdere, and about 700 metres at its narrowest, between Kandilli on the Asian shore and Aşiyan on the European one. A good swimmer can cross it, and every summer a couple of thousand do, in the Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swim from Asia to Europe. shipping history Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/bosporus-strait-facts-currents-depth/ https://bosporus.org/bosporus-traffic-first-half-2026/ Between January and June 2026, 19,277 ships passed through the Bosporus, according to Turkey's transport ministry. That is 107 a day, slightly fewer than in the same period of 2025 (19,381) and well below 2024 (20,780). Yet the ships carried more: their combined gross tonnage rose to about 301.5 million, up from 291.7 million a year earlier and second only to 2023 among the last four years. The long trend of fewer, bigger ships through Istanbul continues (traffic and transit rules). shipping Black Sea Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/bosporus-traffic-first-half-2026/ https://bosporus.org/canal-istanbul-project-status/ On 13 October 2026 Turkey's transport ministry said it wanted to put Canal Istanbul out to tender and start building "as soon as possible". It gave no date, no cost and no word on who would pay. The ministry was answering written questions from the opposition daily BirGün, and its answer amounted to this: the surveys are done, zoning plans are being drawn up in stages, road designs along the route have begun, and nobody has dug the canal. Canal Istanbul Erdoğan politics Montreux Convention Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/canal-istanbul-project-status/ https://bosporus.org/hagia-sophia-mosque-reconversion/ Ships entering the Bosporus from the Sea of Marmara pass under a skyline that has hardly changed in five centuries: Topkapı Palace on the point, and behind it the great dome of Hagia Sophia, flanked by four minarets. For 86 years that building was a museum, a deliberate statement by the Turkish Republic that its most famous monument belonged to everyone. On 10 July 2020 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made it a mosque again. politics Erdoğan Istanbul history Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/hagia-sophia-mosque-reconversion/ https://bosporus.org/haydarpasa-sirkeci-stations-istanbul/ Two railway stations face each other across the southern mouth of the Bosporus. On the European side, under the walls of Topkapı, is Sirkeci, the old terminus of the Orient Express. On the Asian side, on the Kadıköy waterfront, stands Haydarpaşa, the stone castle of a station built as the start of the line to Baghdad and Mecca. For a century travellers changed continents between them by ferry. history politics Istanbul Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/haydarpasa-sirkeci-stations-istanbul/ https://bosporus.org/imamoglu-arrest-istanbul-democracy/ On 14 October 2026 Ekrem İmamoğlu stood up in a courtroom inside the Silivri prison complex, west of Istanbul, and began a four-day defence. He had been in that prison since 23 March 2025. He was elected mayor of Istanbul three times, in March 2019, again in June 2019 after the government had the first result annulled, and again in March 2024 with a bigger margin. He's the politician polls have most often shown beating Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Prosecutors want him jailed for somewhere between 828… politics Erdoğan Istanbul Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/imamoglu-arrest-istanbul-democracy/ https://bosporus.org/montreux-convention-explained/ Every warship that wants to pass the Bosporus is governed by a treaty signed in a Swiss lakeside town in July 1936, before radar, before aircraft carriers mattered, and before NATO existed. It has outlived the League of Nations, the Soviet Union and every government that signed it. In the fifth year of Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine, it is still the most important document in Black Sea security. Montreux Convention security Black Sea Erdoğan Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/montreux-convention-explained/ https://bosporus.org/rumeli-hisari-anadolu-hisari-fortresses/ The Bosporus is at its narrowest, about 700 metres, between Aşiyan on the European shore and Kandilli on the Asian one. Two Ottoman fortresses face each other across it there. Together they show, in stone, why whoever holds this stretch of water holds the Black Sea. fortresses history security Istanbul Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/rumeli-hisari-anadolu-hisari-fortresses/ https://bosporus.org/russia-black-sea-fleet-2026-montreux/ On 2 March 2026 the Russian minesweeper Valentin Pikul sank at its berth in Novorossiysk, according to Ukraine's defence ministry. It wasn't a famous ship. But where it sank says a lot. Novorossiysk, on Russia's own coast, is where the Black Sea Fleet moved after Ukraine made its historic base at Sevastopol in Crimea too dangerous to use. Four and a half years into the full-scale war, the fleet that was supposed to blockade Ukraine has been hunted across its own sea by a country with almost no… security Russia Black Sea Montreux Convention Ukraine Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/russia-black-sea-fleet-2026-montreux/ https://bosporus.org/russia-shadow-fleet-turkish-straits/ On 6 January 2026 the tanker Elbus, flagged in Palau and heading for a Russian port, sailed north through the Bosporus past Dolmabahçe, Bebek and Rumeli Hisarı. Two days later a sea drone, presumed Ukrainian, hit it off İnebolu on Turkey's Black Sea coast, and the damaged ship limped to anchor under the eye of the Turkish coast guard. It was one of a string of Russia-linked tankers attacked within reach of the Turkish shore since November 2025. All of them had been, or were about to be, in the… shipping Russia Black Sea Erdoğan Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/russia-shadow-fleet-turkish-straits/ https://bosporus.org/turkey-black-sea-maritime-command-beykoz/ In Beykoz, on the Asian shore near the Bosporus's northern end, Turkey has set up the headquarters for the navy of a peace that doesn't exist yet. On 3 April 2026 the Turkish defence ministry announced a Maritime Component Command in Beykoz to lead the naval part of the Multinational Force Ukraine, the force Europe's "coalition of the willing" is preparing for the day Russia and Ukraine reach a settlement. Its core staff, all Turkish, had been in place since 25 August 2025. security Black Sea Montreux Convention Ukraine Erdoğan Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/turkey-black-sea-maritime-command-beykoz/ https://bosporus.org/turkish-straits-bosporus-dardanelles/ A tanker leaving Novorossiysk for the Mediterranean doesn't pass one strait. It passes a system about 370 kilometres long: the Bosporus through Istanbul, the Sea of Marmara, and then the Dardanelles, the 61-kilometre channel that Turks call the Çanakkale Strait. International law treats the three as one waterway, the Turkish Straits, and so does every navy that has tried to force or hold them. Dardanelles history security shipping Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://bosporus.org/turkish-straits-bosporus-dardanelles/