Turkey’s maritime safety authorities have confirmed that a rudder malfunction caused a collision between two vessels and suspended shipping traffic in the Bosphorus strait for an hour on November 28, 2016.
The GAC shipping agency reported that a 114 metre vessel identified as M/V Forward collided with 224 metre carrier Wadi Alkarnak at 14:13 pm local time (11:13 GMT) around the middle of the Strait, an international shipping lane for oil and grain.
Both vessels were damaged in the collision with no reports of casualties. The waterway reopened just after 3pm local time.
The damage to one of the vessels can be seen below.
The Bosphorus is one of world's most important chokepoints for the maritime transit of oil. Over 3% of the global supply of oil, mainly from Russia and the Caspian Sea, passes through the 17 mile waterway connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean; it also carries large amounts of grain from Russia and Kazakhstan to world markets.
PTI reported in August 2016 of a similar incident where three members of the Turkish Coast Guard were killed when their boat capsized after being struck by a bulk vessel carrying diesel fuel.
The bulk carrier, the Tolunay, was a Cook Island-flagged bunker which crashed into the Coast Guard on its way to the Black Sea.