WORLD ENERGY STRATEGY IS RESHAPING FOR 21^st CENTURY

 

In the Russian Federation’s Black Sea resort town of Sochi, President Vladimir Putin held his third summit meeting since the outbreak of the Iraq war 17 months ago with the leaders of the “Old Europe”, President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder, before he was scheduled to proceed to Ankara for his two-day State visit on 2-3 September which was postponed due to hostage taking in a school in Russia. This, in itself, was proof of the fact that this State visit will not be just a run-of-the-mill tourism tour on the part of the Russian leader, nor an ordinary bilateral contact of two neighbouring countries, but concerns the coordination of Turkey’s vital geo-strategic location with the reshaping of the global interests of Europe and Asia - the world energy strategy ahead for the 21^st century.  For details of this global diplomatic formation which has been shaping for years, if not decades, and what to expect for the future, please see the article below.

There is a long list of important political, economic and military topics that will be discussed, or rather finalised,  in Turkey between President Putin and his hosts, President Sezer and PM Erdogan when this visit is eventually held, but none of them is as vital as the energy arrangements that are sure to have far reaching repercussions and impact on world economy and diplomacy in the remainder of this century.

Turkey`s global energy plans are military strategy minded

The ground for this work was laid down in the last years of the 20^th century with the successful completion of the Blue Stream natural gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey’s Black Sea port Samsun from under the Black Sea and, from there, to Ankara through conventional continental pipelines. With the completion of the natural gas pipeline network in Turkey within a few years, Turkey will get 30 BCM (billion cubic meters) natural gas a year from Russia as from 2008 and that is only the gas. For crude oil supplies and cooperation in the energy sector in general other arrangements are in the offing, but natural gas or LNG (liquidified natural gas) tops the list of Turkey’s energy arrangements for the century.

Of the Russian Federation’s 200 million tons of oil exports a year, reports the semi official joint Turkish-Russian venture, www.rusyaofisi.com, 120-130 million tons are shipped abroad through pipelines and the rest by tankers through the Straits. As the Straits are strained in handling such a big load of dangerous material through the densely populated city of Istanbul and the Dardanelles, Turkey has been pressing for curbing this navigation. On 26 May 2004 President Putin told the Russian Parliament Duma that they were planning to relax the southern oil exports route, the Turkish Straits, by building pipelines to join the Adriatic pipeline from Bulgaria and Romania.

Moscow has eventually suggested to Turkey to build the Trans-Thrace pipeline in Turkey’s European lands. It is a 193 km pipeline from Kiyikoy on the Black Sea coast to Ibrikbaba on the Saros Bay in the Aegean Sea.

In addition to the strong reactions of Green Peace and other environment conscience circles to this project in a beautiful natural environment, the Turkish Government has also had reservations on the grounds that it would create very dense navigation in the Aegean. The Turkish objection is naturally due to the thousands of Greek islands that exist in the Aegean. It will enable Greek tankers to have an upper hand in handling this oil cargo, but whether Ankara outspokenly speaks about it or not, there is also a great military strategic setback.

During the critical days of the Cold War when Turkey permitted the first Soviet aircraft-carrier to pass through the Straits in the seventies, Washington (Secretary of Defence Laird) threatened Ankara that they would stop the Soviet Navy from going out to the warm seas, if not on the Turkish Straits, on what they call the “Choke Point”, somewhere right under Gallipoli. It was another way of saying to Ankara that Turkey could not possibly remain neutral in a potential US-Soviet war, with or without NATO. Today President Bush has enlarged that threat outside the strategic Turkish Straits and says about his future military plans for the world that you are either with me or against.

Under these conditions and in the light of the Iraq war and Afghan developments, it is evident that Turkey is loath to have another Gallipoli campaign in Saros Bay which was saved nine decades ago with Ataturk’s genius and the Turkish nation’s heroism. Instead, Ankara has suggested to Moscow that the Samsun-Ankara natural gas pipeline should be extended to Ceyhan which is becoming even more important than Rotterdam for the EU.

Sunday’s (29^th) Milliyet reports that Turkey’s State owned pipeline company, Botas, has initialled an agreement with the Russian oil multinational, Gazprom, to build a 6-7 BCM capacity LNG terminal in Ceyhan, Adana. It will be the main outlet for Russian natural gas to the world and Iranian natural gas will also be marketed that way. The relevant agreement will be signed during President Putin’s State visit to Turkey, according to the reputable daily. It will make Turkey an energy corridor from North to South, as well as East to West. The Russian and Iranian gas will be shipped worldwide by tankers after being liquidified in Ceyhan. This project to be built by 2006 will be supported by the natural gas to be stored in Tuzgolu, the Salt Lake near Ankara, another joint venture by the two big neighbours.

This project is very important for future energy procurement, but its significance is even deeper. With the oil from Kirkuk in Iraq and Azerbaijan/Kazakhstan through the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline as well as natural gas from Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s south eastern Mediterranean coast is becoming the transit centre of the Gulf and Caspian energy basins for the world.      

Can the United States forestall these projects?

It is evident that President Putin felt the necessity of consulting his EU partners in Sochi about these giant energy projects before proceeding to Turkey. Other than the relatively small BTC pipeline for oil from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, none of these giant energy projects are American backed and the American objections to them are common knowledge. This objection went as far as the American Embassy’s threat in Ankara on the eve of PM Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Tehran last month that Turkey could be subjected to the American legislation ILSA (Iran and Libya Sanctions Act).

Nevertheless, PM Erdogan disregarded the American warning and carried on with his Tehran visit. Now President Khatemi of Iran is preparing to pay a State visit to Ankara. Meanwhile, all these projects are going through with Ankara’s belief that ILSA and other American sanctions have long gone out of force, with or without the American Embassy’s knowledge.     

In fact, the period after the American elections in two months seems to be a rough time in Turkish-American relations with massive economic cooperation projects to go into force with the countries in Washington’s black books, primarily Iran and Syria, as well as the Russian Federation.

An AA dispatch on Saturday (28^th) reports that Turkey’s economic relations with Syria have reached a turning point with the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) concluded by the Exports Minister, Kursat Tuzmen, and his Syrian counterpart, Ghassan El-Rifai. The FTA, concluded four months earlier than the deadline established by the two prime ministers, end of 2004, is a 1000-page comprehensive agreement virtually lifting the frontiers in mutual trade for the two countries.

As for economic relations with Russia, with $9-10 billion mutual trade in the offing this year (in addition to 1.7 million Russian tourists this year, $12 billion Turkish contracting business in that country and over $2 billion Turkish investment there), it has already become Turkey’s second biggest trade partner and is heading to overtake Germany in this regard.

The six agreements Turkey and Russia were supposed to sign in Ankara during Putin’s State visit, a “multi dimensional cooperation” would have been created between the two neighbours. Even though the tragic terrorist events that claimed more than 200 school children’s lives in North Ossetia prevented the State visit from taking place on 2-3 September, everything is ready and they will go into force as soon as the State visit takes place, before the end of the year, according to official Russian sources. These six agreements will bring Turkish-Russian relations to a stage just a step short of strategic cooperation. It will cover a wide range of areas stretching from energy, tourism, and economy to the “protection of secrecy in defence industries” and cooperation on strategic research between the two foreign ministries. In other words, while the term “strategic cooperation” between Turkey and the United States remains to be a meaningless empty balloon, the two big neighbours are taking concrete strides in that direction without any pretentious claims. As for an answer to the subheading above, many Turks and probably a bigger number of Russians believe that the three major terrorist events which were committed in Russia within a week or so (90 people killed in two concurrent aircraft accidents, ten people killed by suicide bombers in front of an underground station in Moscow and finally hundreds of deaths and many more wounded in the North Ossetia school) were not a coincidence. This bloodshed indeed stopped the State visit from taking place, but everyone prefers to give the benefit of the doubt to a civilized Super Power about being behind them. Besides, it is Washington’s federal policy to prove to the world that no one can get anywhere with terrorism.      

How will the terrorism weapon fare in this reorientation of global importance?    

Meanwhile, Ankara is doing its best to prevent an overt clash with the United States and gives Washington more credit for intelligence than overtly resorting to that path in the foreseeable future, in addition to its current headaches in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and the Sudan, not to count the distant North Korea. That is why despite its intense disenchantment over the American policies on protecting the PKK and efforts for a Kurdish UDI in northern Iraq, Turkey prefers to be patient and allow the global terrorism problem to sort itself out with the least damage to the country.

It is now clear that the Americans will not honour their promise to destroy the PKK in northern Iraq. Instead Washington has returned to its old policy of treating the “PKK problem” as a political issue and not a military solution for Turkey. To this end they have “created a rift” among the PKK militants on the Gabar mountains and the imprisoned PKK leader Osman Ocalan’s brother Osman Ocalan has ostensibly broken away from PKK/KONGRA-GEL and settled in Baghdad with about 100 followers to run this political campaign against Turkey under the USA’s protection, while the rest of the PKK is pestering the peace of the country with terrorist activities, luckily not with much success so far.

Turkish Intelligence reported to the Government back in July that PKK terrorists had infiltrated into Turkey’s main cities with explosives and ammunition after they received explosion training on the Gabar mountains. This timely intelligence and the countermeasures taken by the Turkish security forces have so far prevented the recurrence in Turkey of tragic terrorist events that have taken place in Russia which prevented Putin from his State visit to Turkey. Of course, the danger of having spoken too soon should never be forgotten about terrorism in Turkey. It will definitely be one of the main topics of concern and cooperation between the two big neighbours when President Putin’s State visit will eventually be held. The ground has already been paved over the years since the Russian Chief of the General Staff’s official visit to Ankara during General Kivrikoglu’s term as the TGS (Turkish General Staff) Chief.

Turkey may have to make a choice over its Georgia and Caucasus policies

This Turkish-Russian cooperation against terrorism is bound to bring in the Caucasus issue because of the Chechen problems for Moscow. That is to say, the terrorist activities against Russia focus on the Chechen activists and the latest hostage taking in a secondary school in northern Ossetia proves that the South Ossetia question, which has induced the new Georgian President Saakashvili to speak of war with Russia, may force Ankara to make a choice between Moscow and the Washington-backed Tbilisi concerning the Caucasus policies.

What will this choice be after the American elections is anyone’s guess, but there are some indications that Turkey’s sympathy may be on the side of the Russian school children victims, especially given the fact that there are great similarities between the Chechen and PKK terrorisms in the two countries. President Putin explained to Turkish journalists in Sochi before his scheduled visit to Ankara that they had given the Chechens the greatest autonomy, that the Chechen people have begun to appreciate it and were withdrawing their support to the terrorists. The over 80% turnout in the Chechen presidential election last Sunday (29 August) and the over three-quarters backing (77%) received by the new president in Chechnya only a few days ago was proof, he said.

Turkey’s Georgia and Chechnya policies today are conventional ones - respect of Georgia’s territorial integrity with consideration to the special statuses of the autonomous regions, Abhazia, Ajaria and South Ossetia. Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation, again with a special status of autonomy. This Turkish policy of the Caucasus does not bother Moscow, but it is very doubtful that due to the Greater Middle East policy of the United States with its obscure scope and aims it will satisfy Washington after the November elections.

The Seventh Eurasia Economic Forum held in Istanbul between 2 and 4 September, with the participation of China for the first time, along with 20 other countries from the EU and Asia, as well as the former Soviet Ambassador to Ankara, Albert Chernichev, was the best indicator for what to expect from Turkey in these policies after the American elections in two months. Asia’s two giant countries, China and India, are keenly interested in the Turkish-Russian joint plans and preparations for a comprehensive economic and political cooperation in Eurasia. uras@ada.net.tr – September 4^th, 2004