ENERGY COOPERATION AT THE CORE OF ERDOGAN’S MOSCOW TALKS
Today’s Zaman
Jan 13 2010
Turkey
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan departed the country on Tuesday for
an official two-day visit to Moscow, seeking deeper energy cooperation
with Russia that will boost European Union-candidate Turkey’s quest
to become a key transit hub for Europe.
In Moscow, Erdogan will be accompanied by a large delegation including
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Energy Minister Taner Yıldız and
Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Caglayan as his talks with Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin will focus on energy and security. The two
sides are also expected to touch upon trade, investments and regional
and international issues.
Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, ever-growing cooperation
dominated bilateral relations between NATO member Turkey and Russia
instead of traditional and historic competition. Then-President Putin’s
December 2004 visit to Ankara marked a milestone in relations as it
was the first presidential visit in the history of Turkish-Russian
relations besides that of Chairman of the Presidium Nikolai Podgorny
in 1972.
Afterwards, within the framework of the "Joint Declaration on the
Intensification of Friendship and Multidimensional Partnership" signed
by the Russian and Turkish presidents during the December 2004 visit,
the two countries have in recent years deepened their ties by signing a
raft of agreements from gas and oil pipelines to nuclear power plants
and have sought closer security cooperation in the Caucasus.
Russian gas supplies to Turkey and a number of oil and gas pipeline
projects including the South Stream project to pump Russian and Central
Asian gas to Europe along the bed of the Black Sea, the second leg of
the Blue Stream natural gas pipeline, linking the two countries, and
the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline to bring Caspian oil to the Mediterranean
via Turkey are among topics to be discussed during the visit as well
as nuclear energy cooperation, including the construction of power
plants in Turkey.
Russia is Turkey’s single biggest trading partner and provides
two-thirds of its gas. The two countries have bilateral trade ties
totaling some $40 billion.
Russia is keen to have South Stream built ahead of the rival EU-backed
Nabucco gas pipeline, which is aimed at cutting Europe’s reliance on
Russian gas. Russia, which supplies a quarter of Europe’s natural gas,
wants to build gas supply routes quickly to bypass Ukraine and other
ex-Soviet states after disputes with Kiev over transit payments in
recent years disrupted flows.
A senior Turkish Energy Ministry official told Reuters that the two
sides would discuss the next step in building the second leg of Blue
Stream, a natural gas pipeline that runs from Russia to Turkey under
the Black Sea. He said Turkey and Russia may also discuss raising
the capacity of the current Blue Stream pipeline and extending it
to Israel.
While in Moscow, Erdogan is expected to have talks with President
Dmitry Medvedev as well, with the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between
Armenia and Azerbaijan expected to be the main focus of the talks. The
Turkish side will urge Russia for maintenance of the "gained impetus"
in efforts of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The Minsk Group of the OSCE has striven to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict, a territorial dispute between Baku and Yerevan, for 17
years. Russia, along with France and the United States, is one of
the three co-chairs of the Minsk Group.
Ankara, which last year agreed with Yerevan to establish diplomatic
relations and reopen their border, overcoming a century of hostility
stemming from the killing of Anatolian Armenians during World
War I, insists on seeing improvement toward a resolution of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in parallel with its efforts to normalize
relations with Yerevan. Ankara argues that partial normalization in
the Caucasus cannot be sustainable as long as parties don’t exert
efforts for complete normalization.