A Review of Emerging Hybrid Threats Targeting International Straits With A Specific Focus on Turkish Straits and Montreux Convention
1. Uluslararası Deniz Hukuku ve Teknolojileri Sempozyumu, Düzce, Türkiye, 20 - 22 Kasım 2025, cilt.1, ss.1-20, (Tam Metin Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Tam Metin Bildiri
- Cilt numarası: 1
- Basıldığı Şehir: Düzce
- Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-20
- İstanbul Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
International straits have traditionally been understood as geographically narrow maritime passages whose legal significance derives primarily from the reconciliation of coastal-State sovereignty with international navigation. Contemporary security developments, however, increasingly expose straits not merely as maritime corridors but as multi-domain systems dependent upon vessel traffic services, satellite navigation, digital communications, ports, energy networks and critical undersea infrastructure. This transformation creates new forms of vulnerability. Cyber operations, GNSS jamming and spoofing, AIS manipulation, sabotage of submarine cables and pipelines, drifting mines, remotely operated systems, covert activities conducted through ostensibly civilian vessels and coordinated information operations may disrupt or influence navigation without taking the form of conventional naval coercion.
This chapter examines the implications of these developments for the law governing international straits, with particular emphasis on the Turkish Straits and the 1936 Montreux Convention. It argues that the central problem should not be characterised as the “obsolescence” of Montreux. The Convention continues to perform its principal legal function: regulating maritime passage and maintaining a carefully constructed balance concerning the access of warships to the Black Sea. Türkiye’s application of Article 19 following the outbreak of the Russia–Ukraine war demonstrates the continuing strategic significance of that regime. The emerging difficulty lies elsewhere. Hybrid threats produce effects relevant to the security and operability of the Straits while frequently falling outside the Convention’s vessel-based, status-based and war/peace-based regulatory architecture.
The chapter identifies four resulting mismatches: an object mismatch, an actor mismatch, a threshold mismatch, and an enforcement mismatch. It concludes that contemporary protection of the Turkish Straits requires neither the displacement nor artificial expansion of Montreux, but a layered legal approach combining the Convention with maritime safety and security law, telecommunications law, general international law, State responsibility, due diligence and technologically informed maritime situational awareness.