But behind the scenes Ankara was worried that the Russian deal could kill the Turkish plan to become an energy transit route between the Caucasus and Central Asia and Europe through means such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which also bypassed the busy waterway and became operational early this year, although it remains in need of extra oil from Kazakhstan to become viable in the long term. Soon after the Russian deal with both Bulgaria and Greece, Ankara laid the groundwork in late April for an oil pipeline project linking Samsun on the Black Sea to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean, though there has been no guarantee of oil to pass via this planned pipeline -- also a plan without Russia' involvement.
Then came the news from Turkmenistan early this week that Putin and the region's main energy producers, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov and Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev, shook hands on the construction of a pipeline along the Caspian Sea to ship Turkmen natural gas to Western markets via Kazakhstan and Russia.
A few days before that, news came from Turkmenistan that at a meeting with Russian President Putin in the Kazakh capital of Astana on May 10, Nazarbayev announced an additional 17 million metric tonnes of Kazakh oil might be used in the Burgas-Alexandroupolis project, the Russian Itar Tass news agency reported.
But now this statement, together with the latest news coming from both Astana and Askhabat that a deal has been struck to ship Turkmen gas to European markets via Kazakhstan and Russia has obviously struck a blow to both US and European efforts to secure alternatives to Middle East oil and gas via routes independent of Russian influence -- such as the BTC pipeline.
It may be true that the two deals could reduce Kazakhstan's interest in routes connecting with the US-backed BTC pipeline, which carries Caspian oil to Turkey and bypasses Russia.
The deals also have the potential to affect the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project, planned to transport natural gas from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary and intended to again bypass Russian gas, but this may be in need of Turkmen gas in addition to its Iranian and Azeri supply.
Therefore the current picture in the energy game between the US and Europe, as well as in Turkey and Russia, seems to boost Moscow's position, furthering Western fears that Moscow could use the power derived from energy for political purposes, as it did in 2006 and this year, when it briefly halted gas supplies to its former Soviet neighbors.
But is the chess game in energy between Russia and the West over, and in particular have the latest Russian deals with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan undermined Turkey's role as an energy hub?
At the moment it is hard to give a definitive answer to these questions.
Those who followed the story of the BTC pipeline project, as I did from the early 1990s until its opening early this year, are certain to say that the game is not over yet on the basis that the parties who currently appear possible losers in the game could at any moment make a move to turn the game in their favor.
And in particular Ankara should learn its lessons from the BTC pipeline story and this time should devise consistent policies instead of purely relying on the US, as it did for the BTC, while not alienating the US or Russia.
Nor should Turkey allow the current internal political turmoil to limit its own room for maneuver in turning the current state of play in the energy game, if possible, in its favor.
