 |
Energy cooperation at the core of Erdoğan’s Moscow talks
In Moscow, Erdoğan will be accompanied by a large delegation including Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, Energy Minister Taner Yıldız and Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan 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, Erdoğan 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.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| AMANDA PAUL |  |
||
| Ukraine: a lost country | |||
| MÜMTAZER TÜRKÖNE |  |
||
| The 52nd anniversary of May 27 | |||
| ABDULLAH BOZKURT |  |
||
| Turkey and Mexico: Distant yet so close | |||
| BERİL DEDEOĞLU |  |
||
| Yemen and beyond | |||
| ARZU KAYA URANLI |  |
||
| On Memorial Day a few words to make your day memorable | |||
| ABDÜLHAMİT BİLİCİ |  |
||
| Google kidnaps Gül! | |||
| CUMALİ ÖNAL |  |
||
| Critical months for Egypt | |||
| DOĞU ERGİL |  |
||
| Qualities of power | |||
| İHSAN YILMAZ |  |
||
| The Egyptian elections, Islam and Islamists | |||
| EMRE USLU |  |
||
| Operational errors | |||
| MARKAR ESAYAN |  |
||
| There is need for a new initiative | |||
| JOOST LAGENDIJK |  |
||
| Europe can’t have it all. Or can it? | |||
| HASAN KANBOLAT |  |
||
| Are Russian tourists being discouraged from visiting Turkey? | |||
| MELİH ARAT |  |
||
| Handmade | |||
| KLAUS JURGENS |  |
||
| Back to the ’80s | |||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
