Turkey has secured the departure of three Turkish-owned ships from the Strait of Hormuz and is working with the Foreign Ministry to get eight more out of the waterway, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu said on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters in parliament, Uraloğlu said there had been 15 Turkish-owned ships in the area. He said three had now left, while four others had not asked to depart because two are power-generation vessels and two are ship-to-ship cargo transfer vessels already operating there.
“We are carrying out the work to remove our remaining eight ships under the coordination of our Foreign Ministry,” Uraloğlu said.
The Strait of Hormuz, between Iran and Oman, handles about 20 percent of global oil and gas flows and is one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints.
Iran sharply restricted passage after the US and Israel began strikes on Iran on February 28, disrupting shipping and driving up energy prices.
Although a US-Iran ceasefire took effect on April 8, traffic has remained weak. Only 15 ships passed through the strait in the two days after the ceasefire, compared with a pre-conflict average of 138 vessels a day, according to Reuters.