Annual General Assembly 2004 - Tasmania

Session 3B

The Likely Effects of ISPS Code on Turkish Shipping Industry

DOKUZ EYLUL UNIVERSITY, SCHOOL OF MARITIME BUSINESS and MANAGEMENT, IZMIR, BUCA, KAYNAKLAR CAMPUS
Department of Maritime Business Administration
SEVÝM ESER
ÇINAR SÖZER
Department of Nautical Sciences
BERK ZÝNCÝR
BARI. KESER

Summary

The recent technological, social and economic changes in world trade have brought about various threats to the shipping industry. Such threats have involved the security issues as well. Although the security threats encountered in the 90’s were almost the same as the ones in the 2000's, since then they have especially increased more and more, due to the recently rising terrorism. In fact the terrorist attacks suffered throughout the world history have caused a danger for the future. Thus various effortful struggles to solve such a critical problem have been adopted. The triggering event urging such proactive measures occurred in the USA on September 11, 2001. The mentioned tragic event, affected the shipping industry as a whole.

Hence the concept of the security has been considered as a serious problem all over the world. The fi rst step taken towards the solution to this problem has been to identify the deficiencies in the procedures related with the security matters at ports, ships and shipping companies. From this point on the developments in ship designs, company policies, port facilities as well as super and infrastructure has become inevitable. In compliance with this requirement, IMO adopted ISPS Code to be implemented onward July 1, 2004. The purpose of this adoption was to correct and complete the missing points in the existing conventions regarding security.

This project aims at discussing organizational, financial, legal effects of ISPS Code on ships, ports and shipping companies in Turkey. The requirements of this code are of great importance for the security of the Turkish Ports and the ships calling these ports. First of all, the number of tourists to visit Turkey will increase in near future and this could mean that a lot of cruise ships are likely to call at Turkish Ports besides the Turkish straits, the strait of Istanbul and the strait of Çanakkale and encounter intensive ship traffic has a geopolitical position of great importance due to its function of linking the chaotic territories. Furthermore, the flow of container traffi c is increasing in Turkey, so security measures are to be taken. Such major issues, however, are most likely to slow down the handling operations, which will in turn affect the parties and the Turkish economy as well. Moreover, the new restrictions of ISPS Code, the probability of detention of Turkish ships can be increased, which might bring about further impacts in Turkish foreign trade and the transit callings through Turkish waters.

Additionally, ISPS Code has a vital importance for the security of the hub storages of all Turkey’s energy, which is mostly imported and stored at a few strategic points. In addition to these, as most of the ports are not specialized in any specifi c port service, instead providing integrated port services, taking security measures at these ports seems to be a challenge. The ISPS Code requirements are likely to affect the users of these ports.

These are some of the apparent prepositions regarding the likely effects of ISPS Code requirements on Turkish shipping industry. Through the method used for this study, more concrete views are expected to be gathered. The methods used in this study will cover interviews with the authorities of the relevant private or state shipping organizations such as ports, shippers, carriers and insurance companies, the governmental bodies and maritime related.

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