No. of Recommendations: 4
Analog:
Turkey cannot charge a transit toll for merchant ships going between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, but it does levy set “service” fees (light dues, rescue, sanitary) that in practice act like a modest toll.
Legal position
The 1936 Montreux Convention guarantees “complete freedom of passage” for civilian merchant vessels through the Bosporus, Sea of Marmara and Dardanelles in peacetime, meaning no transit fee for the passage itself.
However, the convention allows Turkey to charge fixed fees to cover lighthouses, life‑saving, and health services; these are standardized charges per ton rather than a negotiable toll.
What ships actually pay today
Turkey has repeatedly revised these service charges, significantly increasing them in recent years (e.g., from about 0.8 USD/tonne to 4 USD/tonne, and then higher in later adjustments).
Official tariff tables list transit light dues and transit sanitary dues, calculated on a vessel’s tonnage and payable within a few days of passage.
So in everyday terms, ships do pay Turkey to pass between the Black Sea and the Med, but formally those payments are for navigational and sanitary services under the Montreux framework, not a “toll for the straits” in the same sense as Suez or Panama
Jeff
No. of Recommendations: 1
And the difference to the cargo ships paying the cost of passage is what exactly?
No. of Recommendations: 1
Does Egypt charge a toll to use the Suez? Does Panama charge a toll to use it's canal? Welland Canal? St Lawrence Seaway?
"Ah" you say, "the strait is a naturally occurring waterway that does not need continual maintenance and staff to operate". I would counter that the necessary staffing to coordinate activities to shepherd a ship through a war zone, when your guys are shooting at everything else, incurs significant costs.
Ship owners always have the option of not paying the toll, and taking their chances. It's not like Panama, where, if you don't pay the toll, they don't open the lock gates for you.
Steve
