Montreux Convention Regarding The Regime of The Turkish Straits - Background

Background

The convention was one of a series of agreements in the 19th and 20th centuries that sought to address the long-running "Straits Question" of who should control the strategically vital link between the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. In 1923 the Treaty of Lausanne had demilitarised the Dardanelles and opened the Straits to unrestricted civilian and military traffic, under the supervision of the International Straits Commission of the League of Nations.

By the late 1930s, the strategic situation in the Mediterranean had significantly altered with the rise of Fascist Italy, which controlled the Greek-inhabited Dodecanese islands off the west coast of Turkey and had significantly militarised the region with the construction of fortifications on Rhodes, Leros and Kos. The Turks feared that Italy would seek to exploit access to the Straits to expand its power into Anatolia and the Black Sea region. There were also significant fears of a Bulgarian rearmament. Although Turkey was not permitted to refortify the Straits, it nonetheless did so secretly.

In April 1935, the Turkish government despatched a lengthy diplomatic note to the signatories of the Treaty of Lausanne proposing a conference on the agreement of a new regime for the Straits and requested that the League of Nations authorise the reconstruction of the Dardanelles forts. In the note, Turkish foreign minister Tevfik Rüştü Aras explained that the international situation had changed greatly since 1923. At that time, Europe had been moving towards disarmament and an international guarantee to defend the Straits. The Abyssinia Crisis of 1934–35, the denunciation by Germany of the Treaty of Versailles and international moves towards rearmament meant that "the only guarantee intended to guard against the total insecurity of the Straits has just disappeared in its turn." Indeed, Aras said, "the Powers most closely concerned are proclaiming the existence of a threat of general conflagration." The key weaknesses of the present regime were that the machinery for collective guarantees were too slow and ineffective, there was no contingency for a general threat of war and no provision for Turkey to defend itself. Turkey was therefore prepared

to enter into negotiations with a view to arriving in the near future at the conclusion of agreements for regulations of the regime of the Straits under the conditions of security which are indispensable for the inviolability of Turkey's territory, in most liberal spirit, for the constant development of commercial navigation between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

The response to the note was generally favourable, and Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, the Soviet Union, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia agreed to attend negotiations at Montreux in Switzerland, which began on 22 June 1936. Two major powers were not represented: Italy, whose aggressively expansionist policies had prompted the conference in the first place, refused to attend and the United States declined even to send an observer.

Turkey, the UK and the Soviet Union each put forward their own set of proposals, aimed chiefly at protecting their own interests. The British favoured the continuation of a relatively restrictive approach, while the Turks sought a more liberal regime that reasserted their own control over the Straits and the Soviets proposed a regime that would guarantee absolute freedom of passage. The British, supported by France, sought to exclude the Soviet fleet from the Mediterranean Sea, where it might have threatened the vital shipping lanes to India, Egypt and the Far East. In the end, the British conceded some of their requests while the Soviets succeeded in ensuring that the Black Sea countries - including the USSR - were given some exemptions from the military restrictions imposed on non-Black Sea nations. The agreement was ratified by all of the conference attendees with the exception of Germany, which had not been a signatory to the Treaty of Lausanne, and with reservations by Japan, and came into force on 9 November 1936.

Britain's willingness to make concessions has been attributed to a desire to avoid Turkey being driven to ally itself with, or fall under the influence of Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. It was thus the first in a series of steps by Britain and France to ensure that Turkey would either remain neutral or tilt towards the Western Allies in the event of any future conflict with the Axis.