The market is asking again whether Turkey might restrict or temporarily close wheat imports in summer 2026.
Istanbul says: «It is force majeure — an act of state». Rostov replies: «So that is allowed?»
Good question.
Russia, summer 2010. Drought; sellers carrying export obligations. Moscow imposes an export ban on grain.
For many sellers the GAFTA prohibition / prevention clause did its job — a clause drafted exactly for this scenario: a ban or restriction on export from the country of origin.
Buyers in Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere were left without cargo and went looking for grain on an already moved market.
This year the picture may look like a mirror image. Only now the talk is about restrictions on import — from the country of destination.
Buyers open their contracts and the GAFTA form and start hunting for a symmetric way out.
There is no symmetry.
Re-read the GAFTA wording slowly:
The Turkish government, closing import on its own side, fits neither the direction nor the jurisdiction of this specific protection.
It does not mean a buyer cannot try to argue force majeure wording. People try worse things in arbitration.
But an import ban, on its own, is not a mirror-image ground for walking away from a standard GAFTA deal.
On top of that, English law does not recognise a general doctrine of force majeure. Protection does not arise because performance became painful, expensive or politically awkward. It arises because a specific event falls within the contract wording.
If the parties wanted a separate protection in case of an import ban in the country of destination, they should have written it in.
The English court is a gentleman with a short memory: it remembers what it has under signature.
An import ban is an unpleasant surprise. It is not, by itself, a release from contract.
Under a classic CIF sale the seller performs primarily by shipment of conforming goods and tender of conforming documents.
It is not a regime in which the seller automatically guarantees the buyer a successful release of the cargo into free circulation in the country of destination.
Taking delivery, import regulation, duties, permits, import restrictions — these sit in the buyers risk zone.
What the buyer still has:
What these options do not give: the right to drag the matter forever, a way out without consequences, and a shift of losses onto the seller.
A refusal is possible. A refusal without consequences is not.
A contract is a deal with pre-allocated risks.
The seller is responsible for export of the goods from his country. If that country closes export, GAFTA gives a specific mechanism of suspension / cancellation subject to notice requirements and proof.
The buyer is responsible for taking delivery and for import regulation in the country of destination. If the country of destination closes import, that does not become an automatic force majeure for the buyer.
This is not a tilt of the form in someones favour. It is allocation of risk: whoever controls the import side bears the consequences of restrictions on that side.
The options for the buyer remain. A simple «we are not performing, force majeure» is not one of them.
The doors have closed. The train is running on schedule.