Oil pollution response system in maritime transportation: implementations of Turkey and Europe

Turkey, same as the rest of the world, has been affected from the environmental disasters and economic losts arising from oil pollution incidents. While Europe and America, following big accidents, has commenced their work on response to oil pollution, Turkey did lately handle legal infrastructure preparations within the framework of the instrument known as briefly the Law on Emergency Response published in 2005. On the other hand, the preparations for the purpose of response to marine pollutions which were put in to practice in a reasonable period enabling compatibility with the maritime sector in Europe were enacted in Turkey in a quite short period. This situation causes problems in implementing the legislation. The system in Turkey has been designed similar to the European one with the strategy of ?polluter pays principle? and a three-tier response system has been grounded on. Under current practices, because of the absence of a leader institution on the emergency preparedness and response, this complex system leads to serious bureaucratic chaos. In this respect, the organization prepared on combat with oil pollution has not been examined yet, as fortunately a serious accident did not happen. The system has been prepared on a legislative framework and its implementations have not been realized.Turkey being a country that meets a big part of its petroleum needs by importing and being on one of the most important petroleum transport routes of the world due to its location over the exit oil pipelines of Russia and Caspian faces very massive tanker traffic in its waters. Especially, undertaking a big role in world?s petroleum production, Russia imports oil by Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. Approximately half of the Russian oil is transported to South European countries through Black Sea, Turkish Straits and the Aegean Sea. Therefore, most of Turkish coastal waters and particularly the Turkish Straits are exposed to high oil pollution risk. Turkey, for the purpose of minimizing this risk has made important investments such as AIS and VTS installations in the previous years to increase safety of navigation, and these investments are being carried on in order to cover all Turkish coasts. In Turkey, like the rest of the world, the statistics are showing a tendency of decreasing for big pollution accidents. According to this statistics investments on response to oil pollution and preparedness must be re-considered and the money of the tax-payers must me spent more effectively. In this study comparative analysis of Turkish oil pollution response system vis-a-vis European System will be done as well as some proposals on what should be done to improve the system in Turkey.