Europe
Romania and Turkey: Neculăescu and Fidan agree to work more closely on Black Sea security after the Khoryv attack
Romania’s new foreign minister Dan Neculăescu held his first talks with Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan on October 24, a day after a drone sank the cargo ship Khoryv 13 nautical miles off Constanța.
Black Sea security was the shared priority in the first contact between Romania’s new foreign minister, Dan Neculăescu, and his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, on Saturday, October 24. The talk came a day after the cargo ship Khoryv was sunk by a drone 13 nautical miles off Constanța, with one sailor dead and others missing, as we reported.
“Attacks on merchant ships are unacceptable. As Black Sea allies, we must act together,” Neculăescu wrote after the conversation. The two countries, he added, will cooperate more closely within NATO and step up trilateral talks with Bulgaria, the Alliance’s third Black Sea littoral state. “What happens in the Black Sea affects countries around the world,” he noted, speaking of a “full bilateral agenda” and a shared priority of “a safer Black Sea”. Romania and Turkey, he concluded, will work more together for a stable and interconnected region.
The statement follows the line Bucharest set out immediately after the strike. On Friday Neculăescu called the attack on the ship a “flagrant violation” of international law and freedom of navigation, and said Russia’s “illegal war of aggression” against Ukraine is escalating and directly affecting commercial shipping in the Black Sea. The same day he said Romania is coordinating with NATO allies, among them Bulgaria and Turkey, to speed up the additional surveillance capabilities agreed at the North Atlantic Council meeting of October 20. In a call with his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha he pledged that his country would increase its capabilities against such threats.
Turkey is a critical interlocutor for Bucharest. It manages passage through the Straits under the Montreux Convention and a few weeks ago proposed a moratorium on attacks on merchant ships.
Paris and the NATO battlegroup
The same day the Romanian minister also turned to Paris. In a call with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot he welcomed France’s role as framework nation of the NATO battlegroup in Romania and its readiness to help Romania meet “specific operational capability needs” in the Black Sea, which he called strategically important for Euro-Atlantic security.
Pressure on the Romanian coast has been constant in recent weeks. A few days before Khoryv, Romanian F-16s had shot down two drones over Sulina, in the Danube Delta.