Turkish Straits crisis

Part of the Cold War
The Straits Question

The location of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits.

Date

Low level:
20 July 1936 – 6 August 1946
(10 years, 2 weeks and 3days)
High level:
7 August 1946 – 30 May 1953
(6 years, 9 months, 3 weeks and 2 days)

Location

Black Sea
Sea of Marmara

Result

Status quo ante bellum

Soviet Union withdraws demands for a regime change on the Turkish straits.
Turkey joins NATO.

Belligerents

Turkey

United States

Soviet Union

Commanders and leaders

Strength

Unknown number of Turkish Navy ships

Unknown number of US Naval advisors

Several warships
Unknown number of ground forces

Status quo ante bellum

The Turkish Straits crisis was a Cold War-era territorial conflict between the Soviet Union and Turkey. Turkey, which had remained officially neutral throughout most of the freshly concluded Second World War, was pressured by the Soviet government to allow Soviet shipping to flow freely through the Turkish Straits, which connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. As the Turkish government would not submit to the Soviet Union's requests, tensions arose in the region, leading to a show of naval force on the side of the Soviets. The incident would later serve as a deciding factor in the issuing of the Truman Doctrine. At its climax, the tensions would cause Turkey to turn to the United States and NATO, for protection and membership, respectively. The result of this action contributed to the European post-war status quo that remains to this day.

The two gateways between the Black Sea and Mediterranean, the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, were very important as a trade route from the Black Sea into ports all over the world for Turkey and its other Black Sea neighbors: the USSR, Romania and Bulgaria, all three of which were militarily aligned. The straits also served as an important component of military strategy; whoever wielded control of traffic through the straits could use them as an exit or entry point for naval forces to traverse to and from the Black Sea.

The conflict has its roots in Soviet-Turkish relations, both just prior to and during the Second World War. Until the last half of the 1930s, Russian-Turkish relations were warm and somewhat fraternal. The previous incarnations of the two nations, the Ottoman Empire and Bolshevist Russia, had promised to cooperate with each other in the Treaty of Moscow.

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Wikipedia