US broadcaster CBS News has offered Turkey an apology for showing İstanbul as a territory of neighboring Greece on a map illustrating the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Turkish media outlets reported.
“This graphic that incorrectly showed Istanbul as a part of Greece and not Turkey, was rectified once we were aware of the mistake,” the CBS channel administration said in a letter addressed to the Turkish Directorate of Communications, indicating that the news outlet would review its broadcasting procedures to prevent such errors in the future.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday that Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun wrote a letter to CBS news protesting their mistake and recalling that İstanbul has been “under the rule of the Turkish people since 1453,” when it was conquered by Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror. Altun also asked for an explanation from the broadcaster regarding its mistake, which he said should be immediately corrected.
Turkey announced on Monday that it had warned both Black Sea and non-Black Sea countries not to send warships through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits in line with a convention that gives it control over the passage of military vessels in the strategic waterway.
“We have alerted countries of the region and elsewhere not to send warships to the Black Sea,” Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said. “We are invoking the Montreux Convention.”
The 1936 Montreux Convention governs the free movement of commercial ships in peacetime through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles straits.
The CBS news report concerned Turkey’s decision on the straits.
Relations between historic regional rivals Turkey and Greece are frosty due to a series of disputes, including over migration.