Turkey OKs dire strait route

By Ben Holland

Associated Press

ISTANBUL, Turkey – Tugboats sluggishly hauled a half-built aircraft carrier through Istanbul’s narrow Bosporus Strait on Thursday – forcing Turkey to shut down one of the world’s busiest waterways.

Normal traffic through the Bosporus – the sole passageway between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean – was to resume after the unfinished flattop ends its five-hour passage. A normal oil tanker would make the trip in 90 minutes.

Six tugboats are towing the engineless, rudderless Varyag through the strait. The Varyag and its skeleton crew have circled for 16 months in the Black Sea waiting for clearance from Turkey to cross the strait.

The 1,020-foot Varyag is bound for the South China Sea. Ukraine inherited the flattop when the Soviet Union fell in 1991, but couldn’t afford to complete it. A Macau, China-based firm bought the ship with plans to turn it into a floating leisure center. Turkey, fearing an accident, refused to let the ship through the Bosporus.

Turks call the 21-mile strait one of world’s most dangerous waterways. There have been about 200 accidents in the strait, which bisects the ancient metropolis of 12 million people, over the last decade. Oil spills and fires have sometimes closed the strait for days.

Turkey only relented after months of negotiations, weeks of technical preparations and anxious days studying weather forecasts.

A total of 11 boats are in the convoy, including hospital ships, firefighters and rescue vessels. The biggest tug – the Russian-flagged Nikolai Shiker – is at the back of the Varyag, acting as a brake.

On shore, emergency rescue units are tracking the flattop down both sides of the strait, and helicopters hovered above monitoring the gray giant.

Crowds gathered along the shores of the Bosporus to watch the giant flattop pass under clear, blue skies.

Turkish officials were afraid that the Bosporus currents could spin the Varyag around and run it ashore, blocking the strait to all shipping for an unforeseeable period.

“The Bosporus narrows to around 700 meters at one point,” said Aslan Dede at Istanbul’s state-run Shipping Rescue Office. “And in six different places you need to change course by about 30 to 40 degrees … there’s a real threat, it’s a risky passage.”

Capt. Cahit Istikbal, head of the Turkish Maritime Pilots’ Association, told private NTV television that an accident was unlikely.

“It has no propeller, no engine and no capability to move itself,” Istikbal said. “If weather turns, it can be turned back or even anchored in the strait.”

The decision to let the Varyag through has angered Turkish environmentalists. Even if it clears the strait without incident, they say, its passage will set a precedent for other vessels that are oversized or carrying dangerous cargoes.