A study on the inspection measures of foreign-flagged vessels and problems on the port state control

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk has emphasized the importance of the sea routes in the global sense as in his quote: "A country who controls the sea, and reaches whatever it needs whenever and whenever it wants can achieve the victory. In this context, one of the components which has the largest share of the seaway in transport forms is a ship. The ships have been performing their role in marine market in the context of national and international rules. Port states has come to the point on the control of these rules as well as flag states. Port states, with respect to ships that are convenient to the sea, have been inspecting within the framework of issues construction, design, equipment, manning and so on. Port state control has an important role through the struggle against substandart maritime transport in terms of safety, security, and environment. Inspections which have been made by states through foreign flagged vessels that are coming their ports have significant importance for ships to reach international standards. Regional port state arrangements have been made by countries getting together in terms of port state controls. Turkey is a part of Black Sea and Mediterranean Regional Agreement and has been checking foreign flagged vessels which have visited its ports. However, the Port State Control Directive has been established, controls are implemented by regulations. The conceptual framework of port state control has drawn, its applications have described, the results of monitoring such as impropriety and detention has carried out in this study. In this context, port state control performances of foreign-flagged vessels and Turkish flagged ships are included, the comparisons between port state control which is implemented in Turkey and regional agreements in which Turkey has participated have been made. At the end of the study, Delphi research has been made towards officers who perform port state controls in Turkey. As a result, it has tried to find out factors related to ship's port state controls which have been implementing in Turkish ports before the transition through the opinion of the experts and main problems of port state control system. Keywords: Port State, Flag State, Foreign-Flagged Vessels, Port State Control, Delphi