Maritime culture develops with love, not bans

July 1, 1926, is the date the Cabotage Law was adopted. We are in the 100th year of the law that granted the Turkish nation the right to sovereignty in its own seas. A country's maritime power is not measured solely by its navy.

Retired Admiral Cem Gürdeniz, who developed the Blue Homeland (Mavi Vatan) concept, expressed it as follows in an article published last week: “The Blue Homeland vision, which is Turkey's geopolitical doctrine, cannot be fortified solely by naval power or commercial tonnage; it can only be fortified by the organic bond established with the sea becoming a 'lifestyle.' In this context, becoming a maritime nation is a public policy that requires the removal of obstacles to the access of millions of citizens to the sea itself, both through the coasts and via amateur vessels.”

When I say amateur, I feel the need to provide a definition. In our country, some words are not used in their true sense. The word amateur is one of them. Most of the time, the word amateur is used to criticize or even belittle a skill level. However, expressions such as “incompetent, unsuccessful, poor” are used for skill level.

Amateur is a word derived from “amor,” which comes from the Latin word “A mors.” The meaning of “amor” is love, affection. Amateur means someone who does a job not for money, but with love and affection. Professional is used for those who do a job for money.

The people who first waved the Turkish flag in Antarctica are amateur sailors Osman Atasoy and Sibel Karasu with a 14-meter sailboat. In 2014, Erkan Gürsoy reached Çanakkale by passing through the Northwest Passage, one of the world's most difficult transit routes, with an 8-meter sailboat he built himself. Erkan Gürsoy is also an amateur sailor. (In 2014, apart from Erkan Gürsoy, only 4 large-tonnage commercial ships were able to pass through the Northwest Passage. The Northwest Passage is the sea route between the Bering Strait, Alaska, Canada's Baffin Islands, and Greenland, and it is covered with glaciers.)

I felt the need to make this explanation for the word amateur because of the regulations and practices of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure and the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change that practically punish and deter amateur sailing.

Today, there are three fundamental problems that discourage the amateur sailor: endless bureaucracy aimed at issuing fines, increasingly heavy financial burdens, and new restrictions that make access to the sea more difficult.

I have been a sailor for 39 years. For the last seven years, beyond an amateur sailor certificate, I have held a Seaman's Book (Captaincy) that grants the authority to operate pleasure craft up to 149 gross tons with international validity. Therefore, the new regulation I am criticizing does not personally affect me. My objection is not for myself, but for the future of amateur sailing.

The first rule at sea is “Safety first.” Therefore, measures to be taken in terms of navigational safety are necessary. But the following expression used by retired Admiral Cem Gürdeniz for the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure's new regulation should also be taken into account.

“Maritime bureaucracy has not yet met with maritime culture. Especially for small boat owners, these new obligations make going out to sea more costly and difficult instead of making it easier. Maritime culture develops not with bans and obligations, but with education, incentives, and accessibility.”

Amateur sailors are in rebellion, but their rebellion is silent. They are venting their frustrations in WhatsApp groups they have established among themselves. Turgay Noyan, my friend of nearly 40 years, who is like an older brother to me both in sailing and in my journalism profession, is a calm-natured, naive person like almost all sailors. I summarize below the article he wrote in Naviga Magazine.

“Enough is enough, you've had enough

For months, I have been trying to hold myself back, but I have no patience left... I am exactly 82 years old. I have been at sea since I started as a rowboat owner in 1961. I have been doing amateur sailing as a cutter owner since 1965. In other words, I am a yachtsman by today's terminology.

My last boat is an 11.60-meter trawler. Actually, it's a Laz boat, an alamatra... I have been using this boat since 1987 with the document given by our state. Now they have made a new decision. From now on, the Amateur Sailor Certificate will be in two classes. Separate licenses for up to 10 meters and between 10 and 24 meters.

According to this mindset, I will no longer be able to use the boat I have been using for nearly 40 years, is that right! I will have to take an exam again for this... I am writing this by taking refuge in your forgiveness and tolerance. A sailor of 60-plus years who has written the book on this subject (I am not saying this just for the sake of it, I have an educational book called Amateur and Sea) will perhaps be examined by someone who has never set sail in their life, never gone out to sea as a boat owner, to upgrade their certificate, is that it?

It's absurd work; if this were the only thing, I swear I might not have rebelled this much... There is also the wastewater issue, the mooring buoy; it's mind-boggling. Don't do it. Don't alienate people from the sea... It's a shame, it's a sin...”

ANCHORING IS BANNED, PAID MOORING BUOYS ARE COMING

That is Turgay Noyan's article. He also stated that he would write a separate article for the wastewater issue and the mooring buoy system. Let me write it without waiting for that article. The Ministry of Environment, under the guise of protecting the bays, is banning anchoring in the bays and introducing a buoy (mooring) system to the bays. They will also rent these buoys to someone and collect additional mooring fees from the boats. It is said that this practice, which should be in place for some bays, will be extended to all Göcek bays this season and to other routes of yacht tourism next season. Already, marina prices in Turkey are almost three times the prices in the Greek islands... For small boats, the 2-year mooring price in marinas has become equal to the value of the boat. And on top of that, a mooring buoy fee has been added.

Many amateur sailors had to sell their boats due to mooring prices, bureaucratic pressure, and astronomical fines prepared like traps. Well, for those who do not sell their boats and continue with persistence and stubbornness, the bays where they can anchor in peace are also disappearing. The bays that are the favorites of yacht tourism are being plundered and concreted over; let alone the bays, there is almost no public coastline left for the public to swim in.

WASTE COLLECTION SYSTEM THAT DISCOURAGES AMATEUR SAILORS

Foreign yachtsmen fled Turkey due to the irrationalities in waste collection practices on boats. Not only foreigners, but for the last three or four years, many Turkish-flagged boats have been spending the season in the Greek Islands. It is both cheaper and there is no heavy state bureaucracy and fines. I don't remember how many articles I have written on this subject for years.

In order to protect the environment, they started implementing a waste collection system from ships in Göcek in 2011. During this time, the practice became widespread and is now controlled digitally. If a boat has not delivered waste within 15 days, it faces a heavy fine. If the goal were to protect the seas, that would be fine, but the system is not working; it has turned into just issuing fines.

There is also a strange pricing for waste collection. There is pricing that changes from marina to marina. I don't know about this season. Last season, you paid between 1500 liras and 3000 liras to deliver waste every 15 days. I mention this for comparison. Half of the money you pay for the water you consume at home is the water cost, and the other half is the sewage waste cost... You already buy water from marinas at a cost between 3 times and 10 times the normal municipal sales price. On top of that, you pay 3000 liras a month for sewage.

Large motor yachts deliver waste digitally in closed bays, but in real life, there is no waste collection facility with the capacity to collect their waste. Most of the time, they discharge their sewage into the sea in the middle of the night. Large motor yachts do not want to leave the place where they are moored and go out to the open sea. Supposedly, according to the Port Regulations, there was a right to stay in a bay for a maximum of 10 days. They stay for the whole season. Now, to prevent this, a mooring buoy system was introduced in Göcek this year, and the duration was increased to 15 days. Let's see how the system will work this season? Amateur sailors will be charged for these mooring buoys. For large motor yachts, such payments are not a problem. We will see if there will be formalistic practices such as transferring from one mooring buoy to another.

If you want to protect the environment, you must establish the infrastructure before thinking about issuing fines. In bays such as Gökova, Göcek, Bodrum, Marmaris, and Hisarönü, where yacht tourism and amateur sailing are intensely experienced, the waste collection facility and waste collection boat capacity are very insufficient. If a sailor wants to deliver their waste but cannot find a suitable facility, the problem is not with the sailor, but with the bureaucracy's view of maritime.

PRACTICES IN THE WORLD

What did we do with our waste before the Blue Card system came out? Did we dump it into the bay where we anchored? No. We were applying the system that is still applied in many parts of the world and in the Mediterranean. Small boats with 4-6 people inside (not large motor yachts and ships) would weigh anchor after anchoring in a bay for a certain period, go at least 3 miles offshore from the coast, and we would discharge our waste at a depth of at least 40 meters.

While the waste of amateur boats is tracked one by one with electronic systems, a significant portion of the millions of liters of gray and black water produced by coastal settlements, whose population doubles or triples in the summer months, is released into the sea via deep-sea discharge without sufficient treatment. What they call deep discharge is 300 meters offshore at depths of 15-30 meters. 80 liters of black water left by boats with 2 or 3-4 people living in them, not in the bays, but at least three miles offshore and at least 40 meters deep, does not pollute the sea. I don't know about the nouveau riche sailors, but sailors who have maritime culture do not pollute the sea they swim in. They do not anchor and stay in a bay for an entire season like spoiled motor yachts. They go offshore and discharge their black water like that. Practices in the world are in this direction.

It is not just black water. Throwing away trash is also paid... Municipalities started to collect money from marinas, and marinas from boat owners, in addition to trash tax. In previous years, I had docked at the island of Halki in Greece. The docking price to the pier, including electricity and water, was one-tenth of Turkey's daily price. A little later, the pier officer came with a paper and four different colored trash bags in his hand. It was written on the paper, please discharge your toilets into the tank, not into the sea in the bay. You can discharge it after going offshore. It was not a warning of the type "I will hang, I will cut" (authoritarian), but a request. And one of the four different colored trash bags was for glass, one for plastic materials, one for paper and similar trash, and the other for organic materials such as food scraps. He also described the location of the trash bins. The bags were not paid for like ours.