Thousands of Turkish environmentalists and local people have been protestingon the Bosphorus, the narrow waterway which runs through Istanbul, to call for a reduction in the amount of oil shipped through the strait.

They unfurled banners demanding an end to what they regard as an increasingly dangerous business, with huge tankers often passing within a couple of hundred metres of Istanbul's waterside houses.

Every month more than two-thousand tankers pass through the Bosphorus and several countries, including Russia, want to increase that number when oil from the new fields around the Caspain Sea comes on stream.