The “option” to close the Dardanelles (aka The Turkish Straights) should NEVER be an “option”… I don’t care what the rules say… they should ALWAYS be closed… if you’re going to exploit the Dardanelles to land Italian troops in the Caucus, you might as well give Italy atomic bombs and say there’s a canal running from the Med through Italy and Germany and on into the Baltic Sea… it’s that stupid a concept to say the Turkish straights are open with a neutral Turkey who NEVER let any belligerents through the straights in the war, period (and i’m blaming WotC for this, not players, it should just be written into the rules as always closed, no reason to be an option at all).
While A&A is not a hardcore super-realistic war simulator, fanciful thoughts like sailing warships through straights that were completely shut down for the entire war vs simply acknowledging “ya, they’re off-limits, just like in real history” is something easily represented in A&A without having to stretch the imagination. The only way to say the Dardanelles are open imho would be to play it as a bid for the Axis to handicap the Alliance player if such a situation was needed, because playing with the blatantly historically inaccurate open straights is a big handicap against the Allies.