TURKISH-AMERICAN ACTION PLAN HEADING FOR A CRUCIAL TEST

Five-point Action Plan agreed upon by Clinton and Yılmaz last December will be put to the test over the Caspian energy lines. Is the exodus of $2 billion from IMKB in two weeks a coincidence or part of Soros’s tricks in Russia and Turkey today, after the Asian Tigers and Japan last year and the one in the pipeline for China? The key in these tricks is the capitalist world’s little known new principle: “Raise him to the point of incompetence” (then drop him without a parachute when the time comes). It is the new version of the 19^th-20^th century imperialism’s tactic: “Give him enough rope to hang himself” (as Saddam did). Turkey is familiar with these tactics and seeks sound remedies in cooperation with the United States and the other victims, if possible. Washington is well aware of Turkey’s value and most probably will find a way to satisfy Ankara.

Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz’s official visit to Washington last December was clearly a turning point for the better in Turkish-American relations. All problems pestering mutual relations in recent decades were put on the negotiation table at the summit and solutions were sought. ( Issue No:3) Energy was the first item on the agenda and it centred around making Turkey an energy transit terminal for the Caspian oil and natural gas supplies to the outside world.

The whole process began with Ambassador Marc Parris’s arrival in Ankara last November as one of President Clinton’s most trusted envoys. As Ambassador Parris’s predecessor, Ambassador Mark Grossman, had already paved the way for this cooperation (having eliminated the disasters of the long “sleeping and thorny period in Turkish-American relations” during his predecessor’s time), it did not take long at all for Ambassador Parris to work out a good action plan to place Turkish-American relations on new and healthier grounds. As a matter of fact, Foreign Minister İsmail Cem’s meeting with Secretary of State Albright, again in November 1997, resulted in the agreement in principle that the MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and the State Department should work together “on strategically important areas”. It was, therefore, plain sailing for the high calibre diplomats of both sides to elaborate upon a 5-point action plan at joint work groups in both capitals.

During the official visit to Washington in December, President Clinton and PM Yılmaz gave the finishing touches to the action plan to increase US-Turkish consultations in five critical areas: (1) Energy, (2) Trade-investment-economic reform, (3) Security cooperation, (4) Regional cooperation and (5) Cyprus-the Aegean.

On the energy front, Turkey and the United States signed an energy framework agreement earlier this year to enhance diplomatic and commercial collaboration between the two to create the right conditions for building a Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, as one of the multiple pipelines to carry Caspian energy to the West. As a follow-up to this framework agreement high-level delegations shuttled between Ankara and Washington and joint Turkish-American teams went to the region throughout the first half of 1998 in an attempt to bring to life Ankara’s ambition of concluding the international agreement for the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline by September or October the latest.

Within this framework, Turkey and the United States also cooperated with the States of the region to seek a resolution to their conflicts. The aim was to end ethnic conflict and develop stable conditions in the Caucasus that will also be conducive to developing, transporting and marketing Caspian energy resources.

On the economic and commercial fronts, the second item of the Washington Summit, a lot was achieved. In January, American Secretary of Commerce Daley personally opened a Business Development Centre in Istanbul and worked out a program to considerably increase commercial links between the US and Turkey. Boeing Corporation and THY have signed an agreement totalling $2.5 billion. A bilateral treaty to prevent double taxation of US and Turkish nationals doing business in the two countries was ratified by the American Senate and the Turkish Parliament. This was a major breakthrough for Turkish diplomacy which had been working towards this goal for many years.

Energy cooperation is the determining factor for success of Action Plan

Rather than the other four items the most crucial point in Turkish-American relations was clearly the first item, energy, and today it is the key to the successful implementation of this Action Plan.

The first half of the year saw impressive improvements in the two countries’ cooperation in this field. The outcome of this cooperation were the breakthroughs achieved in the realization of the joint plan: the East-West corridor from Baku to Ceyhan to carry the Caspian oil to the West. On July 8^th, at a Senate Subcommittee in Washington, Ambassador Marc Grossman summed up the fruits of the cooperation with Ankara as follows:

“…States in the region have begun to leave mutual distrust and competition behind on this issue and to cooperate more closely. This has been especially true in the last three months.

Turkey, with much to gain from our mutual success, has taken a lead.Turkey successfully solicited Kazakhstan’s and Azerbaijan’s cooperation in committing to transport oil through an East-West pipeline, and is continuing to work in that direction.Turkey organized a conference of foreign ministers of the key regional states in March, which endorsed our pipeline strategy.

Turkey’s cooperation is important if we are to accomplish our objectives. That is why President Clinton identified energy cooperation as a key element of our bilateral relations with Turkey when Prime Minister Yılmaz visited in December. And, since last December we have conducted regular high-level meetings to move our agenda forward. We encourage Turkey to facilitate the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline as a commercially attractive alternative for transporting Caspian oil. Turkey is nearing completion of a feasibility study on Baku-Ceyhan that will provide a catalyst for American and other investors to initiate Caspian investments.

The Eurasian transport corridor, including oil and gas pipelines across the Caspian to Baku and then the Caucasus to Ceyhan, would help us achieve our objectives.

It would establish Turkey as an important economic bridge between Central Asia, the Caucasus, and world markets; improve Turkish and European energy security; generate revenue to develop Turkey’s energy infrastructure; provide a commercially attractive alternative to transport through Iran; and help relieve traffic congestion in the Turkish straits.”

Joint US-Turkey Caspian Demarche

Since Ambassador Grossman’s above testimony in the US Senate, under which, to use one of PM Yılmaz’s expressions, any Turk would “sign his name”, fresh joint efforts were exerted to conclude the international agreement for the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. The Special Advisor for the Caspian Basin to President Clinton and the Secretary of State, Ambassador Richard Morningstar, came to Ankara at the end of July and, along with Ambassador Yaman Başkut, the then economic affairs chief of the MFA, flew to Baku and Ashkhabad in an attempt to finalize the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, along with a parallel natural gas pipeline to carry 30 billion m³/year Turkmenistan gas to Ceyhan and the Western world.

Başkut and Morningstar had special messages from Presidents Demirel and Clinton to Presidents Aliyev and Türkmenbaşı. They urged the Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan rulers to accept the joint American-Turkish plans for the Caspian energy as explained above by Ambassador Grossman – the “main pipeline” from Baku to Ceyhan called “Trans-Caspian Transport”. Part of the Kazakh oil will be connected to it, in addition to the American CPC (Caspian Pipeline Consortium) to carry the Tengiz deposits to Novorossiysk and then finally a parallel natural gas pipeline to Baku-Ceyhan will be built to ship the Turkmenistan gas to Ceyhan and beyond from Baku after it reaches Azerbaijan from under the Caspian. As the Americans undertook the financing of this long and costly route for the Turkmen gas, at the Clinton-Yılmaz talks Ankara came round to supporting it by discarding its previous incomplete agreement with Iran and Turkmenistan to bring the gas to Turkey via Iran.

Against this background, Başkut and Morningstar made their two-day tour of Baku and Ashkhabad, but saw that the last arrangement about the Turkmen gas was insoluble. It was not possible to work out an agreement between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan about the trans-Caspian pipeline.

Is the Action Plan incompatible with diversification of energy plans?

All the countries concerned, Turkey, the United States, the Russian Federation and the Caspian oil producing countries, have their own multiple pipeline strrategies and they do not necessarily please the excluded sides. For instance, three pipelines are currently in development with American initiatives at Turkey’s disenchantment. They are early oil out of Baku, north through Russia, early oil west from Baku to Georgia and the CPC line from Kazakhstan through Russia. As against these American initiatives started before the Clinton-Yılmaz action plan was reached, Turkey also has three of its own at Washington’s disenchantment. They are:

• To import natural gas from Russia with a pipeline through Romania and Bulgaria. This 6 billion m³/year pipeline is to be increased to 14 billion m³, according to an agreement signed this year,
• To import a further 16 billion m³/year natural gas from Russia through a pipeline to be laid under the Black Sea to Samsun with a project called the Blue Current. ( Issue No:4),

• To import 16 billion m³ natural gas from Iran with a pipeline that had, by and large, been built by the time Mesut Yılmaz came to power in June 1997. The United States reluctantly accepted that it was too late to reject it, but the completion of the project is being delayed due to the American objections. This $20 billion project could, in fact, gain much bigger dimensions with the shipment of 30 billion m³/year Turkmenistan natural gas to Turkey and further West via Iran. But Washington stepped in just in time to forestall the final agreement by Turkey, Iran and Turkmenistan.

American persuasion methods hurt Turkey too. 

The recent economic crisis in Russia with heavy waves also rocking Turkey’s economy were apparently triggered off by Washington to dissuade Moscow from oil and gas arrangements without American participation and to undermine Iran-involved projects.

Taliban’s recent occupation of Afghanistan with a direct military involvement by Pakistan is not unrelated either. Back in October 1996 the Taliban militia announced its intention to build a $2 billion pipeline to run the Turkmenistan oil and natural gas to the Indian Ocean through a pipeline via Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This alternative to the Iranian route is more hypothetical than realistic, as no one would invest such a big sum for such a precarious project and political conditions, but it is a stumbling block for Tehran. The 12 Iranian diplomats now held hostage by Taliban in Kabul have made Iran hoist with its own petard, to put it in a Shakespearan expression. It may be an understandable, even justified American reaction to Iran’s totally illegal hostage-taking in 1979, but all these disturbances and delays are not helping Turkey’s economic plans for energy.

In other words, on one hand, Turkey and the United States have a perfect cooperation with a 5-point action plan mutually agreed upon and sincerely implemented by both, but on the other Turkey is seriously suffering from Washington’s designs and activities for world hegemony.

Given the exodus of $2 billion from the Istanbul Stock Exchange within a few weeks with no reasons directly involving Turkey, it is apparent that the second item of the Action Plan, concerning Turkish-American economic cooperation, has to be revised. If this economic globalization is hurting the second biggest economy of the world, Japan, among a number of others including Turkey, it is high time to drop the “conspiracy-theory” rhetorics and come to grips with it collectively, as no one is any match for the American economy today.

Turkey is contributing to these efforts and trying to put an end to the scourge by replacing hot money with reliable international loans and direct investments from abroad.

There is reason to believe that Washington will be flexible enough to facilitate Ankara’s efforts in this direction in the near future. uras@ada.net.tr, August 25^th, 1998.

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