Highway robbery
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Sitting astride the main overland route to the Middle East, Turkey has been casting understandably covetous eyes on the flood of European haulage traffic to the new Middle Eastern markets. Until now the exploitation of this strategic situation has been confined mainly to the lucrative palmgreasing which has seemed inevitable for any truck driver hoping to cross the country, but the tax bombshell which Turkey has just lobbed into the international transport world is a threat of an entirely different magnitude. The details are still being worked out by the Department of the Environment as we write, but it seems certain that the new transit tax and fuel levy will put between £800 and perhaps £2,000 on the cost of a Middle East trip.
The implications for British operators—and for the country's export trade—could be grim. The alternative land route is across the Russian highway that bypasses Turkey—a ready answer for Eastern Bloc hauliers, but not for Westerners who, if admitted at all, might face an equally punitive tax. The West's vital exports to markets beyond Turkey could be strangled. British government officials told CM this week that they were "conscious of and concerned by these possibilities." Also, countries like Iran (which has accepted that it will have to invest in Turkish facilities to move its planned 2m tons a year by road through Turkey by 1980) could have their growth stifled.
More than transport interests are at stake here, and the situation justifies a very strong line being taken, preferably in concert with our EEC partners whose operators and industries stand to suffer like our own by this "stand and deliver" action.