Over the weekend, following a request from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced that Ankara would implement the Montreux Convention. The decision made headlines around the world — but what does this mean, exactly?
The most important implications of Turkey’s decision have more to do with Turkey’s own diplomatic strategy rather than any particular effect in shifting the tide of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The military impact is probably limited
This 1936 international agreement allows Turkey, during times of war, to regulate transit of warships through the Turkish Straits, the heavily traveled waterway connecting the Black Sea and the Aegean. But militarily, implementation of the convention isn’t likely to have a meaningful effect. After Russia seized most of Ukraine’s navy in 2014, Ukraine’s naval forces are limited to a handful of small patrol boats and one frigate.
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Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, by contrast, is sizable, including approximately 45 warships and six submarines. Moscow has also invested in modernizing the fleet considerably since 2014. Last month, Russia moved at least six warships and a submarine into the Black Sea as part of its buildup of forces before the invasion of Ukraine. Russia already enjoys overwhelming naval superiority in the Black Sea.
It’s also not immediately clear what Turkey’s decision to implement the Montreux Convention will mean. Under the terms of the convention, Turkey enjoys considerable flexibility — even in times of war — in how it polices the straits. Moreover, warships of the countries that border the Black Sea, including Russia, can return their ships and submarines to base. As Russia has already positioned its navy for this war, Turkey’s implementation of the Montreux Convention will have little or no effect on the war’s conduct.
What is Turkey’s strategy?
In this sense, Turkey’s decision helps Ankara address its own diplomatic balancing act in the crisis. The core of Turkey’s strategy has been to engage in steps that underline its importance while minimizing its risk. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned NATO and the European Union for being too weak in their response. And Turkey has repeatedly offered to mediate negotiations. These moves, however, seem designed more to keep Turkey in the media spotlight as an important party.
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In terms of tangible steps to support Kyiv, Turkey has done little. The government in Ankara issued earlier statements that it would not impose economic sanctions on Russia, and has not done so, to date. Turkey has not offered to send additional weapons to Ukraine, as many of its NATO allies have. And Turkey has not closed its airspace to Russian flights, as most countries in Europe have chosen to do.
Turkey has, however, supplied drones to Ukraine, a sale completed before the conflict began. These weapons reportedly have had significant value in the field, but the actual number in the Ukrainian arsenal appears limited. Overall, these sales are more likely part of Turkey’s push to join the global weapons trade than an attempt specifically aimed at supporting Ukraine’s defense.
Is this just ‘noisy diplomacy’?
The decision to implement the Montreux Convention continues Turkey’s strategy of what I call “noisy diplomacy.” This latest move highlights a favorite talking point of Turkish diplomacy — that geography makes Turkey strategically important. This argument has the virtue of being true, even if the actual repercussions in this context are not particularly striking. Nonetheless, Ankara has much to gain and nothing to lose in reminding all parties that Turkey holds some valuable geostrategic real estate.
At the same time, the policy does no real damage to Russia. For Turkey, Russia is both an economic partner and a strategic model. In general, Turkey’s foreign policy in recent years has been marked by occasional and limited conflict with Russia — particularly in Syria and Libya — and by significant cooperation in other spheres.
In particular, Turkey chose to purchase Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile system in 2017, throwing U.S.-Turkish relations into a tailspin, straining ties within NATO and resulting in significant U.S. sanctions. Turkey has no desire to leave NATO, from which it accrues significant benefit — but nor does it feel particularly constrained by its NATO alliance.
As foreign policy analyst Selim Koru wrote recently, Turkey’s cooperation with Russia is an important part of a general strategic and ideological consensus among Turkish elites — that Turkey, like Russia, is a resurgent power whose natural role in the world has been stymied by the West. Turkey, like Russia, wishes to expand its influence and power in a new age of multipolarity and declining Western power. In Koru’s view, elites in Ankara view Russian revanchism less with worry than with understanding and sympathy.
Moreover, Turkey’s economic ties to Russia — and, to a lesser extent, to Ukraine — make the crisis particularly fraught for Ankara, giving Turkish officials reason to send signals of sympathy to both sides. Russia and Ukraine are Turkey’s first- and second-largest sources of wheat. Russia provides nearly half of Turkey’s natural gas supplies.
With Turkey already in the throes of the worst economic crisis in decades and popular discontent with spiraling prices rising, the Erdogan government is weathering the worst crisis it has faced since the attempted coup of 2016. Turkey approaches this crisis from a position of extreme vulnerability, making the costs of confronting Moscow — even if Ankara was so inclined — extraordinarily high.
In this crisis, Turkey has attempted to play the role of important international participant, while doing as little as possible to antagonize either NATO or Russia. The decision to implement the Montreux Convention over this vital waterway made news headlines — but makes few waves. From Ankara’s standpoint, that makes it a perfect step to take.
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Howard Eissenstat is an associate professor of Middle East history at St. Lawrence University and a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute.
