The Bosphorus Strait is a natural Strait and an
internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul in
northwestern Turkiye. In addition to
its crucial role as a transit route for commercial ships, the Bosphorus Strait
also attracts many tourists wishing to experience life in the sea.
It forms part of the continental boundary between Asia and Europe, and divides
Turkey by separating Anatolia from Thrace. It is the world's narrowest strait used for international navigation.
Most of the shores of the Bosporus Strait, except for the area to the
north, are heavily settled, with the city of Istanbul's metropolitan population
of 17 million inhabitants extending inland from both banks.
The Bosporus Strait and the Dardanelles Strait at
the opposite end of the Sea of Marmara are together known as the Turkish Straits.
Sections of the shore of the Bosporus in Istanbul have been reinforced
with concrete or rubble and those sections of the Strait prone to deposition are
periodically dredged.
GEOGRAPHY
As a maritime waterway, the Bosphorus specifically connects the Black
Sea to the Sea of Marmara and thence to the Aegean and Mediterranean seas via
the Dardanelles. It also connects various seas along the Eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Near East, and Western Eurasia.
Thus, the Bosporus allows maritime connections from the Black Sea all
the way to the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean via Gibraltar, and to
the Indian Ocean through the Suez Canal, making it a
crucial international waterway, in particular for the passage of goods coming
from Russia.
There is one very small island in the Bosporus just off Kuruçeşme.
Now generally known as Galatasaray Island (Galatasaray
Adası), this was given to the Armenian architect Sarkis Balyan by Sultan Abdülhamid II in 1880.
The house he built on it was later demolished and the island became a walled
garden and then a water sports centre before being given to the Galatsaray
Sports Club, hence its name. However, in the 2010s it was completely overbuilt
with nightclubs which were torn down in 2017. It reopened to the public in the
summer of 2022.
EXPLORATION
Before the 20th century it was already known
that the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara flow into each other in a geographic
example of "density flow". Then in August 2010, a continuous
'underwater channel' of suspension composition was discovered flowing along the
floor of the Bosporus, which would be the sixth largest river on Earth if it
were on land. The 2010 team of scientists, led by the University of Leeds, used a robotic "yellow submarine" to
observe detailed flows within this "undersea river", scientifically
referred to as a submarine channel, for the first time. Submarine channels are similar to
land rivers, but they are formed by density currents—underwater flow mixtures
of sand, mud and water that are denser than sea water and so sink and flow
along the bottom. These channels are the main transport pathway for sediments
to the deep sea where they form sedimentary deposits.
VILLAGES
The shores of the Bosporus were once lined with
small fishing villages that had grown up since Byzantine times but really came
into their own in the 19th century.
Until the early 20th century most were only
accessible by boat (known as caiques) along the Bosporus since there were no
coast roads. Today the villages are no more than suburbs of Greater Istanbul
but many retain the memory of their original village status in the suffix '-köy (village' to their names. e.g. Ortaköy, Yeniköy, Arnavutköy, Çengelköy and Vaniköy.
These villages often had
distinct identities associated with agriculture: Arnavutköy, for example, was
associated with strawberry-growing while Çengelköy was famous for its sweet
cucumbers.
HISTORY
As part of the only passage between the Black
Sea and the Mediterranean, the Bosporus has always been of great importance
from a commercial and military point of view, and it remains strategically
important today.
It is a major sea access route for numerous
countries, including Russia and Ukraine. Control over it has been an objective of a number of
conflicts in modern history, notably the Russo-Turkish
War (1877–78), as well as of the attack of the Allied Powers on the Dardanelles during the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli in the course of World War I.
In 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
the Bosporus' importance as a route by which grain reached the world was thrown
into sharp profile.
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