This is why Vladimir Putin's visit to Ankara was carefully followed and analyzed in Washington. The conclusion reached by many is that Turkish-Russian relations are based on the firm grounds of pipeline realpolitik. The two countries are purely and simply following their very own national economic and strategic interests. Ankara's intentions are clear: It wants to keep its options open in terms of becoming an energy hub. Surrounded by Iraq, Iran, the Caspian states and Russia, Turkey is uniquely well placed to control the flow of gas into Europe. In other words, it would take much more than vague hopes of European Union membership to convince Ankara not to sign major energy agreements with Moscow.Simply put, Turkey is in no mood to see Russia as a potentially aggressive expansionist power. This, however, is exactly how most American analyst have seen Moscow since last year's confrontation in Georgia. The consensus in Washington is that Russia has now become a mafia state willing to assert a sphere of influence in the former Soviet territories with its main weapon: gas. There were high hopes at the end of the Cold War that a new relationship would emerge with Moscow. That optimism is now gone. A few commentators, such as Tom Freidman, from The New York Times, still blame Washington for rapidly expanding NATO in the 1990s. But the majority of the American power establishment has moved on. The big debate now is whether Ukraine and Georgia should be included in the club.
Another dimension of this need to once again “contain” Russia is of course about energy and pipelines and this is where Turkey enters the picture. Washington has long been a strong supporter of alternative pipelines bringing Caspian and Central Asian energy resources to Western markets without going through Russian territory. The classic example is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (TBC) pipeline linking Azerbaijani oil with Europe through Georgia and Turkey. Last month, another major project to sideline Russia gained the green light for construction when the EU and Turkey signed the Nabucco project, the 3,300-kilometer-long gas pipeline from Central Asia to Europe.
But Putin's visit to Turkey made a mockery of Nabucco's very own raison d'être. Under the deal signed on Thursday, Turkey granted the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom the right to use its territorial waters in the Black Sea, under which the company wants to route a second South Stream pipeline to gas markets in Eastern and Southern Europe. Needless to say, this Russian pipeline, called the South Stream, will directly compete with Nabucco. The project needs Ankara's consent because the planned route passes through Turkish territorial waters.
It was not clear that Turkey would agree to the project since South Stream bypassed Turkish territories. Turkey has been a regular customer of Russian gas through the Blue Stream pipeline and was believed to fear that some of that gas would instead be diverted to the EU with the South Stream. This is why Ankara needed to be convinced by Putin.
To buy Ankara's support, Russia agreed to pay a high price. Russia will now help finance important projects for Turkey, including an oil pipeline from Samsun to Ceyhan and one or more nuclear power stations. Steps toward relying less on natural gas and oil by launching its own nuclear stations has been a Turkish strategic objective since 2003. In that sense, the deal with Russia is a long-cherished dream for Turkish politicians.
Russia, for its part, now achieves its long-cherished goal of selling gas to Europe without doing so to Ukraine. This way Russia can assert itself in its near abroad without paying a high price in terms of economic relations with Europe. As the Financial Times clearly put it, “the principal motive for South Stream is Russia's ambition to bypass Ukraine, which is the transit country for 80 percent of Russia's gas exports to the EU. As became obvious in January, in the latest flare-up of its long-running dispute with Ukraine over gas prices, Russia has no way to cut off the gas to Ukraine without also cutting off most of its European customers.” In that sense, South Stream and its sister pipeline Nord Stream, intended to run under the Baltic, will manage to fully isolate Ukraine, the crown jewel in Russia's sphere of influence.
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