Turkey and Russia move closer to building strategic partnership

The two countries also have ambitious plans to boost their trade volume to $100 billion in the coming years. “Our relations are developing and becoming more diversified in the political, military, economic and cultural spheres. What is exciting for me is that both sides have a positive will,” to further boost ties, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said at a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, late on Wednesday.

Erdoğan, who had talks with Putin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during his one-day visit to Moscow, announced that the two countries will start work on abolishing visa requirements for their nationals.

“The prime minister [Putin] has just given us the good news that efforts to mutually abolish the visa requirements will go forward as planned,” Erdoğan said, adding that the Turkish side hoped that a final deal would be concluded during an upcoming visit by Medvedev in May or June.

Erdoğan said later in İstanbul that the two countries would also hold a strategic cooperation council meeting during Medvedev’s visit, a cooperation platform similar to the ones Turkey launched with neighboring Syria and Iraq last year.

Both Putin and Erdoğan pledged to increase the use of national currencies in bilateral trade, which the leaders want to boost to $100 billion within the next five years. Erdoğan said the aim is achievable in the next four years.

In another key achievement of Erdoğan’s short visit, Energy Minister Taner Yıldız and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin signed a memorandum on building nuclear power plants in Turkey in a sign that Russian firms would be given a second chance to build Ankara’s first plant.

Turkey canceled a previous tender to build a nuclear power station, after a court earlier ruled the tender, won by Russian Inter RAO and Atomstroiexport and Turkey’s Park Teknik, invalid due to problems with the pricing of electricity from the plant.

Putin and Erdoğan also had talks on energy projects. Putin said the governments of Italy, Turkey and Russia should consider signing a deal to support the proposed Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline, an oil link between Turkey’s Black Sea coast and the Mediterranean.

The Russian prime minister also said Russia has won Turkish support for all its major oil, gas and nuclear projects, while carefully avoiding its usual harsh criticism of the rival trans-Turkish EU-backed Nabucco gas pipeline. He said Ankara had pledged to fully clear the Russian gas pipeline project South Stream before November 2010, when construction is due to begin.

 “We have an agreement that before Nov. 10, 2010 ... the Turkish government will make all the necessary judgments and issue a construction permit. In the course of today’s talks Mr. Erdogan confirmed these intentions,” Putin said. “I very much hope this work will be finished as planned,” he said, adding that the work on South Stream was going according to plan with environmental, geological and seismic studies near completion.

Putin also said the project, which apart from Russia’s gas export monopoly Gazprom involves Italy’s ENI, may benefit from an inter-governmental agreement between Russia, Turkey and Italy.

Turkey aspires to become a key transit hub for Europe, but is facing a tough balancing game between rival projects supported by Moscow and the European Union. It insists South Stream and Nabucco are not rivals.

Putin added that cooperation with Turkey should also involve asset swaps between major firms and added Russian firms were ready to take part in the privatization of Turkey’s state assets.

Russia: No link between Armenia ties, Karabakh

Putin also told Erdoğan that Turkey should not link the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan populated by ethnic Armenians who are now in control of the area, to its bilateral relations with Armenia. “Both the Nagorno-Karabakh problem and the Turkish-Armenian problem are very complicated by nature. I do not think it is right to tie them into one package,” Putin said. “It is unwise from both a tactical and a strategic point of view to package these problems together,” he added.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov echoed Putin at a press conference with his Armenian counterpart, Eduard Nalbandian. “To try and artificially link those two issues is, in my opinion, not correct,” Lavrov told reporters in Yerevan. “We are interested in this relationship normalizing. The sooner that happens, the better for the whole region.”

Turkey and Armenia agreed in October last year to establish diplomatic ties and reopen their land border, closed by Ankara in 1993. But the accords need parliamentary ratification, a step Turkey says depends on Armenia making concessions in the festering conflict with Turkish ally Azerbaijan over the breakaway mountain region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

“I don’t want to have the impression, and I think the international community also does not, that Turkey is specially blocking the ratification of the protocols,” Nalbandian said. “What’s a reasonable timeframe? It’s not dragging it out or creating artificial barriers.”