Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants to build a canal.

Called a “crazy project” by none other than Erdoğan himself, the Kanal İstanbul would link the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and from there through the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean.

Its main purpose would be to bypass the busy Bosporus, the dangerously overcrowded strait that bisects the teeming metropolis of Istanbul.

It would also upend the 85-year-old Montreux Convention that demilitarized the Bosporus and, by extension, the entire Black Sea basin.

Salvatore Babones, Australia’s globalization expert” and a contributing editor at 19FortyFive, goes into the details of this muti-billion dollar project.