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News & Current Events Apr 13, 2026 at 4:13 PM

Europe set to copy Egypt’s Suez Canal tolls with £20bn new waterway plan amid Strait of Hormuz tensions

Posted by lurker_bee

Europe set to copy Egypt’s Suez Canal tolls with £20bn new waterway plan amid Strait of Hormuz tensions
Business Insider Africa
Europe set to copy Egypt’s Suez Canal tolls with £20bn new waterway plan amid Strait of Hormuz tensions
Europe is moving closer to creating a Suez Canal-style maritime corridor as Turkey advances the £20 billion Istanbul Canal, a project designed to establish a toll-based shipping route linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara and reshaping global trade flows
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Silver_Middle_7240 6 days ago +205
Before anyone tries to equate this with Iran, there is no right to freedom of navigation in a canal. Charging tolls for them is perfectly fine
205
Nextasy 6 days ago +78
It's true, but what's funny the article talks mostly about the Bosphprus in Turkey, and a bit about Gibraltar in Spain. Both of these are straits, not canals. The Turkish proposal is to build a canal next to the strait, so they can charge tolls. It raises the question of why anybody would use it, which suggests (to me) that we end up seeing some bridges and whatnot that probably kill traffic through the strait proper. For Gibraltar, I have no idea how thats expected to function
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nicathor 6 days ago +32
They want to remove shipping traffic from the straight to make it more tourist friendly and less polluted (they claim)
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Dingcock 5 days ago +12
I thought the ships passing through were part of the tourist attraction ? When you are near a strait like that, it's a common tourist activity to spend an afternoon watching the the boats
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Opening-Ant3477 5 days ago +5
Sure, but that doesn't let you sidestep the Montreux Convention.
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didroe 5 days ago +1
How does this let them sidestep the convention?
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fury420 6 days ago +22
> The Turkish proposal is to build a canal next to the strait, so they can charge tolls. It raises the question of why anybody would use it, The Bosporus strait is limited in capacity, there's often a queue of vessels waiting to traverse it and waiting for days is expensive.
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Nextasy 5 days ago +2
Figures, thanks! Gibraltar, too?
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nekonight 5 days ago +4
No most natural straits arent small enough or the interior water area small enough or busy enough for it matter. The other one that normally has a days long wait is the other strait thats in the news lately. Thats because the Persian Gulf is not really big enough for massive anchorages so everyone waits outside for open docks instead. There's the one around Denmark which normally doesnt have a wait but can get fairly busy.
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Nextasy 5 days ago +1
Figures! I thought it sounded bananas that the article mentions trying something similar with Gibraltar. Makes no sense to me
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fury420 5 days ago +1
I do not know, I haven't looked into that project.
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bluskale 5 days ago +1
>The Bosporus strait is limited in capacity Apparently the proposed canal would double the current traffic flow. I wasn’t familiar with the size of the strait before, but it’s easy to see how this could be true after looking at the actual geography.
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CrumpetNinja 5 days ago +5
Capacity issues going through the straits. And it also allows them to bypass their obligations under the Montreux Convention. Which gives them a military card they can play for favours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits
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Man_under_Bridge420 6 days ago +5
Express way
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Filias9 6 days ago +5
They will artificial limit it somehow. Small boats will be ok, but big one will have limit due to pollution, capacity limit, etc. They can build some new low height bridge too.
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Classicgoose 5 days ago
Might have something to do with the Montreaux Convention
0
adrr 5 days ago +1
Iran never ratified UNCLOS so they aren’t bound by those rules. Like US never ratified the treaty on cluster munitions or land mines and so they don’t violate UN law because they never ratified the treaty
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Slothrop_Tyrone_ 5 days ago -8
Well no it’s not “perfectly fine”. It’s inflationary and disrupts international trade. It undermines the global trade market which has existed since the post-war period and accelerated in the 1990s. I’m not sure why you’re being so glib about it?
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Silver_Middle_7240 5 days ago +8
Tolls for canals have been norm since the 1860s when the Suez was built. It's not inflationary or a disruption to international trade because the tolls are the canal owners' incentive to create artificial passages for ships in the first place.
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undeleted_username 5 days ago +2
Canals have to be built and maintained.
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Reasonable_Gas_2498 6 days ago +47
So because the Suez Canal, which saves ships from sailing around the whole African continent, is highly profitable, turkey wants to build a 20 billion dollar canal right next to a natural straight that is connecting the same two internal seas? Let alone the Black Sea which basically only borders three countries 
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salerg 6 days ago +25
Yes, take into account the limited capacity of the Bosporus straight. It is the same as paying a toll for a highway vs free roads.
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cxmmxc 5 days ago +6
Strait.
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0202_tihssitidder 5 days ago +13
That waterway (Bosporus Strait)is high traffic and they want to restrict that for tourism and recreation. Having giant, ugly tankers go by is not ideal. It is extremely narrow. It is very busy with 40,000+/year. If really 20B, that's c****. The tolls will pay for it. Most likely a low height bridge will be built over the Bosporus Strait. The key metric you should quote is the annual traffic, not how many countries border the Black Sea. Right?
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aluke000 5 days ago -7
If that is really the purpose of the new project, then why not make the new waterway for tourism and recreation instead, so you can truly have a recreational paradise designed from the ground up? Well because they are only doing it to generate revenue that didn't otherwise exist. Blocking the existing with an obstruction like a low bridge with the excuse of it being for tourism and recreation is only to force the use of the new waterway.
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0202_tihssitidder 5 days ago +9
Your ideas lack any insight of that geographic area...or really of anything. Good day.
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branflake777 5 days ago +7
> capable of handling around 160 vessels or oil tankers each year. Why so small? Is it just for tankers, leaving regular traffic for the straight itself? For context, it says the Panama Canal handles over 13k a year.
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IndependentYak8 5 days ago +11
it’s 160 per day
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ShoulderPast2433 6 days ago +18
That's some AI generated bullshit 
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hope_is_the_hope 4 days ago +5
"Europe" 
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Efficient-Wolf7068 5 days ago +6
A canal is an infrastructure that has been built and needs maintenance. Similarly as tolls on highways or railroads.
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doxxingyourself 5 days ago +2
Were they not already connected?
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nlk72 6 days ago -5
Wtf. April fools day was 2 weeks ago.
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