TURKPULSE No: 28 ..................... JANUARY 15th, 2001
The Turkish public is greatly
annoyed with President-elect Bush designating an Armenian-descent Arab American
congressman as Energy Secretary because he is on record as saying the
Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is a “dream”.
As a matter of fact, this
definition is an expression of the exact truth and Pulse
too has long been
describing it as such because there is no oil to run through such a big pipeline
from Azerbaijan to Turkey and supplementing the scanty Azeri oil with the Kazakh
supplies is not any more realistic, affirm experts. As for the second and much
more important leg of this project, the Turkmen natural gas from under the
Caspian to join the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, it is also quite a dream, being so
tortuous and expensive to materialise.
What
has President Bush up his sleeve instead of Baku-Ceyhan?
To speak the truth, the whole
idea was a dream or ulterior motive of the outgoing Clinton Administration and
Turkey knew this from the beginning, but Ankara did not want to go against a
superpower when Washington assured Turkey that American companies would
undertake all the expenses of the pipeline construction. Now that 3-4 years have
gone by since the beginning of this project, in accordance with the Americans’
unrealistic designs and all the relevant agreements have since been signed by
the three countries concerned (Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia), the American
companies have been dragging their feet for the last few months about starting
the construction even under the Clinton Administration.
The new American Administration has delivered a deadly blow to it even
before taking over the Government by designating the project’s enemy as the
Secretary of Energy.
Now the question is what are
the Americans’ motives behind it and what impact will it have on Turkey’s
energy plans, as well as on Turkish-American relations under President Bush?
The answer to the first
question is not easy for a Turk to guess from all this distance. It may mean a
hostile stance by the Bush Administration towards Turkey from the outset, but it
is not very likely, nor in keeping with Washington’s traditional policy of
patience. Instead, the Americans, when there is a situation against their
desires, they keep on bringing it up on every occasion, relevant or not, to show
that they do not take “No” for an answer.
A more likely reason for this
assignment, therefore, is that Washington has taken a realistic step about
dropping the Baku-Ceyhan project after having played for time and delayed
Turkey’s energy plans for cooperation with the countries of the region –
Russia, Iran, Iraq and the former Soviet countries such as Azerbaijan,
Turkmenistan and Georgia. Now that it is no longer possible, they may come round
to accepting the Turkmen gas passing through Iran to reach Turkey; and that was
the original plan anyway. Presidents Demirel, Rafsanjani and Turkmenbasi had
already initialled such an agreement before the Americans won Turkey over to
foul it at the end of 1997. That agreement may again go into force in practice,
if not with a statutory treaty. Ankara had already foreseen this eventuality and
expanded the capacity of the pipelines under construction to Iran, thus causing
a few years of delay in the completion of the project that is now drawing to an
end.
The Turkish-Iranian natural gas
pipeline that is expected to go into operation this year and will eventually
carry 10 billion m3 of gas a year may well transport to Turkey the
Turkmen gas as the two countries, ie Turkmenistan and Iran, are already linked
with gas pipelines. Nobody can tell if the gas reaching Turkey is Iranian,
Turkmen or a mixture. In any case, the new American Administration seems to have
resigned to the Turkmen gas passing through Iran to reach Turkey.
As for the other Caspian oil
and natural gas pipelines, the Bush Administration may try cooperation with
Moscow, at least that is what it declares, but in practice this is almost
impossible and the preparations in the offing show that Washington has other
plans for energy.
Hydrogen energy will replace fossil fuel. Turkey is blessed with borax
A Turkish/American professor in
the United States, in his capacity as a world-renowned expert in this field, has
already briefed the National Security Council in Ankara that the future is in
hydrogen energy. He tried to dissuade Ankara from planning to meet Turkey’s
future energy needs with Russian and Caspian oil and natural gas with a pipeline
network covering the whole of Turkey.
The Turkish Government’s
decision after this briefing two months ago is unknown, but by all indications,
the ongoing energy projects with Russia, Iran and Iraq will not be changed.
Instead the Energy Ministry has stepped up the construction of the Turkish part
of the Blue Stream project by investing nearly $300 million on the Ankara-Samsun
stretch of this pipeline and the Russians have concluded a final contract with
Italian and Japanese companies to complete their part that involves laying the
pipelines on the Black Sea bed, 2000 meters deep.
Another cooperation of the two
countries in the energy sector involves borax. Turkey owns more than two-thirds
of the world’s reserves of this mineral while Russia is the biggest market for
it. In the cold war period the Americans put borax in NATO’s strategic items
list and prevented Turkey from exporting it to the Eastern Bloc. When American
companies underhandedly re-exported Turkish borax to the Soviet Union earning
exorbitant profits with the claim that there is no proof that it is a strategic
item, NATO’s export ban fell through. Thus the path has been cleared for
Turkey to sell borax to Russia. The Americans’ excuse was that through a new
technology they call ‘spectrum’ they analysed the fumes from the Russian
Sputniks and found out there were traces of borax in the Soviets secret hard
fuel used in spacecraft. They could not make fuel out of borax and deleted it
from the strategic items list.
Now that this argument has
opened the door for Turkey to export borax to Russia they are really sorry and
are doing everything possible to prevent this trade, but to no avail. The latest
American attempt in this regard involves privatising borax, but State Minister
Sukru Sina Gurel is standing in the way with PM Ecevit and the Turkish State
(equivalent of the USA’s Federal Government) staunchly behind him.
During the latest economic
crisis in Turkey, the IMF insisted on rapidly privatizing Turkish Airlines (THY)
and Turk-Telecom. The Ecevit Government complied by starting the formalities to
complete the privatisations by the end of April. Another privatization at the
closed-door talks concerned Eti Holding which deals with the exploitation and
sale of borax. The bureaucrats in charge of the IMF talks secretly prepared a
decree for privatising Eti Holding, but Gurel prevented it and had the decree
cancelled, thus becoming one of the top targets of the Disinformation Mechanism
in the Turkish press, along with Deputy PM Mesut Yilmaz and Energy Minister
Cumhur Ersumer who had already become prime targets.
It is apparent that the following days will see ardent bargaining, if not strife, between the new American Administration and Turkey on foreign policy issues, the core being their differences of approaches to world energy questions and national requirements. How far this strife will go is anyone’s guess. Turkey’s past experiences will definitely not facilitate the Bush Administration’s task to work out a happy middle course in this struggle, but such solutions should never be ruled out in Turkish-American relations, as mutual national interests dictate such compromises. uras@ada.net.tr - January 15th, 2001