How Did The Bosphorus And Dardanelles Play In The Cold War?

The Cold War was a period between 1947 and 1991 in which much of the world was engaged in a conflict that pitted the economic ideologies of communism against capitalism. The leader of the communist world, the Soviet Union, and the leader of the capitalist world, the United States, made the world choose sides between communism and capitalism. After World War II and in the beginning of the Cold War, the US created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, which served as an intergovernmental military alliance between much of the capitalist countries that were opposed to communist rule. In 1952, three years after NATOs creation, Turkey joined NATO. Turkey has and continues to control the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, waterways that

The Bosphorus and Dardanelles, by connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, played an important role in fueling Cold War tensions between NATO countries and the Soviet Union that continue to be present today. The Bosphorus and Dardanelles are small channels located on Turkey’s northwestern coast. During Ottoman rule, from 1453 to 1922, the Bosporus and Dardanelles were controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and for a time period in the 1800s Russian war ships were not allowed to pass through, thus landlocking Russia’s navy and turning the Black Sea into a lake. This predicament forced the Russians to succumb to the Ottomans because the only access to the Mediterranean, the epicenter of trade in Europe, was through the Bosporus and

In 2004, NATO members met to discuss the Black Sea region and their use of the Bosporus. In the discussion they agreed that “it is in [their] interest to project the security institutions of Europe into the Black Sea region... and it is just as clearly the purpose of Moscow to close the Bosporus to Europe”(Jackson). After the Cold War ended, NATO and Russia were still engaged in a battle over the control of the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. This led to continued tensions, given they each wanted control over the region, and forced them to revert back to the Cold war tactics when engaged in a standoff in the region. In 2014, with the Russian invasion of Crimea, Turkey begrudgingly allowed “Russian...warships to cross through its straits into the Black Sea”(Kahn). The historical context of this document illuminates how the Montreux Agreement forces Turkey to allow Black Sea countries’ ships pass through the Bosporus and Dardanelles. This is significant because it shows how Turkey’s inability to stop Russian warships from passing through the straits due to the Montreux agreement threatens Turkish sovereignty and raises tensions with NATO, thus reverting back to the Cold War era status