Four days into the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine on February 27, 2022, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu declared that the operation in question was a “war.” He explained to CNN Türk, “Under these conditions, we will apply the Montreux agreement. Article 19 is pretty clear. In the beginning, it was a Russian attack and we evaluated it with experts, soldiers, and lawyers. Now it has turned into a war. This is not a military operation; it is officially a state of war.” The Turkish government has also sought to use the convention to de-escalate tensions in the Black Sea and, more broadly, has cautioned all countries not to send any warships into the Black Sea—perhaps to limit the possibility of Western maritime escalation.
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