RISKS AND BENEFITS AWAIT ERDOGAN IN MOSCOW
The Moscow Times
Jan 13 2010
Russia
ANKARA — Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s trip to Russia to
pursue gas deals will boost the EU candidate’s quest to become a key
transit hub for Europe but highlights a difficult East-West balancing
game for Ankara.
Once Cold War foes, NATO member Turkey and Russia 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 region.
Erdogan was to fly into Moscow on Tuesday evening for a two-day visit
where he is expected to meet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for talks
that will focus on energy and security.
He is also scheduled to meet President Dmitry Medvedev, the Kremlin
press service said Tuesday.
Analysts said Turkey’s overtures to Russia are a reflection of
Ankara’s ambitions to wield greater political clout in the region,
pressing its influence and contacts to the east, from the Middle East
to Russia and Central Asia.
"Turkey has turned its Ottoman-era anxieties towards Russia into
a remarkable relationship with a very strong commercial and energy
dimension," said Ian Lesser, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund
in Washington.
"But it also raises long-term questions about the difficult choices
and pressures Turkey might face if the West’s relationship with Russia
becomes more competitive. It’s a complicated game and leaves Turkey
very exposed," Lesser said.
Last year, Putin won Ankara’s approval for the South Stream pipeline,
a Moscow-backed gas pipeline to cross Turkish waters to Europe, which
is seen as a competitor to the European Union-backed Nabucco project.
Russia may also be looking to gain a stake of as much as 50 percent
in a Turkish oil pipeline to be built by Italy’s ENI and Turkey’s
Calik, which will join the Black Sea port of Samsun and Ceyhan in
the Mediterranean. Russia has agreed to provide some of the oil for
the pipeline.
Turkey, which is using the energy card to promote its membership of
the EU, has insisted that South Stream and Nabucco are not rivals,
but complementary.
Russia is Turkey’s biggest single trading partner and provides
two-thirds of its gas. The two countries have bilateral trade ties
of some $40 billion.
"The closer ties between Moscow and Ankara were a matter of concern
[for the West] a year or so ago, but at the end of the day Europe
realizes that Turkey imports 65 percent of its gas from Russia,"
said Wolfango Piccoli, from Eurasia.
Underlying the importance that Ankara attaches to the visit, Erdogan
will lead a delegation that will include Foreign Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz and Foreign Trade Minister
Zafer Caglayan in talks expected also to touch on trade, investments,
regional and international issues.
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 said the two sides would
discuss the next step in building a second leg of Blue Stream, a
natural gas pipeline that runs from Russia to Turkey under the Black
Sea. He said Turkey and Russia might also discuss raising the capacity
of the current Blue Stream pipeline and extending it to Israel.
A test of Turkey’s alliance with Russia came during the Russia-Georgia
war of 2008. Turkey, which neighbors Georgia, was at pains not to be
seen as criticizing Moscow over the war.
Erdogan is also expected to discuss peace in the southern Caucasus
region where Russia and Turkey share energy security concerns.
Instability there could also have implications for the northern
Caucasus where Russia is fighting Islamist insurgents.
Turkey and Armenia, a former Soviet republic, last year agreed to
establish diplomatic relations and reopen their frontier, overcoming
a century of hostility stemming from the World War I mass killings
of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.
But Turkey, faced with a backlash from Muslim ally Azerbaijan, has
said it will only ratify the accords if Armenia gives ground in talks
over the province of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are still technically at war over the
mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic Armenians backed
by Christian Armenia broke away from Muslim Azerbaijan in a war that
cost more than 30,000 lives.
Years of diplomacy by Russia, the United States and France have failed
to get the two sides to sign a peace deal. Mediators late last year
reported progress between Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and his Armenian
counterpart Serzh Sarksyan.
Russia is one of the three main international mediators in the peace
talks, which are led by the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe’s Minsk group.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress