As you might recall, I have talked about the water pollution in the Gulf of Izmir in my last article. I would like to give further information regarding the water pollution in Turkey inasmuch as Turkey is a peninsula, so this type of environmental problems are very important to my country, as I mentioned before. Turkey is surrounded by three big seas: the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea to the west. In addition to these seas, there is also a, not so big, sea at the northwest of Turkey called the Marmara Sea. It is the sea that is at the intersection of the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. It also covers the Bosporus Bridges that connects the Asia continent to Europe. The city that I live, Istanbul, has borders with this sea. All of these seas have water pollution of their own due to several reasons, extreme amounts of oil exposure being the biggest one. It is estimated that 410,000 tons of petrol contaminate the Black Sea annually. Also, it is assumed that about 350 million tons of petrol travel on the Mediterranean Sea every year and 0,5 - 1 million tons of it pollutes the Sea. In other words, it can be concluded that the main reason Turkey?s Sea?s contaminate is the wrongly done shipping of petroleum.
All the big seas aside, I would like to focus on the Marmara Sea as it is the nearest one to my home. The Marmara Sea includes the Bosporus. Similar to the Gulf of Izmir, the Marmara Sea wasn?t paid attention by means of conserving the pollution and this fact hasn?t changed. According to an article published by the Union of Turkish Bar Association (UTBA) in 2007, the Marmara Sea has showed signs of contamination in the 1950s as the amount of oxygen was found to be rapidly declining. This pollution wasn?t stopped by the government and as such became one of today?s major huge problems. There are fundamentally, two reasons for this pollution: the shipping of oil and the release of waste water to Marmara Sea.
The Bosporus of the Marmara Sea have witnessed a great increase in shipping after the Cold War. As stated in the report of Transportation Ministry of Turkey in 2013, 74,321 ships travel along the Bosporus annually. With such gigantic numbers, the number of accidents and the contamination of the Marmara Sea has developed tremendously.  Just between 1988 and 1994 115 accidents happened in the Bosporus. The government of Turkey realizing this issue have made several regulations, but were unable to put them in action. For instance, 1982 constitution?s 15^th article and 1994 regulation have both underlined this issue. Both mention the reduction of shipping in the Marmara Sea. Especially the 1994 regulation requires ships carrying hazardous materials to report to the Transportation Ministry of Turkey. However, Turkey's power to regulate commercial shipping through the Bosporus is limited by the 1936 Treaty of Monteux that decides the Bosporus as an international waterway. In spite of the existence of many international agreements having given Turkey the right to regulate the right of passage through the Bosporus to ensure a safe flow of traffic, due to pressure from some Black Sea border countries, Turkey has not been fully enforcing the shipping laws passed in 1994. Thus, only a small number of vessels passing through the Bosporus report their cargo. Making it impossible for the government to prevent them from passing as they don?t even know they are passing.
In order to reduce the ship traffic in Bosporus, Turkey has developed alternative means to transport oil and gas from Central Asia. Like, Caspian oil pipeline route from Baku to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, as well as the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey. However, these means are unfortunately only solves so little of the actual problem as there is a capacity that you can use these pipelines, but the demand for oil is increasing day by day and the only solution seems to be the water passage through Bosporus.
The second reason the Marmara Sea?s water is so polluted is due to the fact that there are many waste water inside. The wastewater plants around the Marmara Sea isn?t adequate for the increasing industry and population, thus the amount of waste water. It is estimated that around 0.3 million m³ of waste water is released to the sea from the 4500-5000 industrial factories around the sea every year. In response to these numbers, according to the government?s explanations, there are about 40 waste water plants and 17 sewer system in the cities that have borders with the Marmara Sea. This number may seem high, at first, but many of the waste water plants are neglected and need repairing. Also, there are still two cities that have no main sewer system collect waste water and send them to waste water plants. It is known for a fact that at least 80% of the current Marmara Sea water isn?t properly treated. Yildiz Technic University, a prestige university in Turkey, has made a report indicating that the waste water plants only do pre-treatment of the waste water at the Bosporus. The water doesn?t get biologically treated which is what is needed.  
In conclusion, tons of petroleum, and its products, are released to the Marmara Sea every year and waste water management around the sea isn?t developed enough to live up to the needs of the sea water. The government, having done many, is yet to find any permanent solution to both of these problems. My idea is that our government has already answers to these questions. However, they do not pay enough attention to these problems. If given enough hard work, the 1994 regulation can help us significantly reduce the shipping accidents. About the waste water, I believe raising conscious through media like advertisements can be a great step to solving this issue as well as building new and more efficient waste water plants.
 
RESOURCES
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21336483
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F1-4020-5175-1_7
http://www.nuce.boun.edu.tr/turkey.html
http://www.tusiad.org:7979/FileArchive/su_yonetimi.pdf
http://www.blackmeditjournal.org/pdf/vol16no3pdf2.pdf
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1644701/cleaning_up_the_bosphorus.html
http://ucmaz.home.uludag.edu.tr/PDF/muh/2002-7(1)/htmpdf/mak06.pdf
http://arsiv.ntvmsnbc.com/news/117042.asp