Azerbaijani state companies are planning to invest some $5bn in Turkey in the next two to three years, a minister has said.
“The investments of Azerbaijani state companies in Turkey top $3bn today. In the coming two to three years our state companies are planning investments of $5bn in the Turkish economy, not to mention investment from the private sector,” Azerbaijan’s minister of industry and energy, Natig Aliyev, told a conference in Baku today.
Azerbaijan invests in Turkish energy projects in particular, with state oil company SOCAR holding the majority of shares in Turkey’s petrochemical giant, Petkim
Natig Aliyev told the international conference, entitled the Azerbaijani Model of Economic Development, that Azerbaijani companies were actively investing in Georgia too. He said that Azerbaijan met 90% of Georgia’s needs for gas and Azerbaijan’s state company, SOCAR, was modernizing the gas distribution network in Georgia.
Natig Aliyev also said that Azerbaijan was working to increase oil and gas production.
Economic Development Minister Shahin Mustafayev told the conference that Azerbaijan had become the region’s economic power house, accounting for 75% of the total gross domestic product (GDP) of the three South Caucasus states.
“In Azerbaijan, the years of reform by late President Heydar Aliyev and current President Ilham Aliyev have created a liberal and independent economy, relying on its own resources and integrated into the global economy,” Mustafayev said.
He said that Azerbaijan’s status was reflected in the country’s international credit rating and in global assessments on the ease of doing business.
The 10th Summit of Heads of State of Turkish Speaking Countries in Istanbul ended after signing of a declaration.
The 10th Summit of Heads of State of Turkish Speaking Countries in Istanbul ended after signing of a declaration.
President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan’s interim President Roza Otunbaeva and Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguli Berdimuhammedov were in attendance at the summit hosted by Turkish President Abdullah Gul.
During the summit, the leaders agreed to appoint Turkish diplomat Halil Akinci as the first Secretary-General of the Secretariat who would officially assume his responsibilities following the entering into force of the Nakhchivan Agreement.
During last year’s summit in Nakhchivan on October 3, 2009, the leaders signed an agreement about establishment of the Council of Cooperation of Turkish Speaking States.
The headquarters of the Council will take place in Istanbul.
The leaders also decided to celebrate the signing day (3 October) of the Nakhchivan agreement as the Turkish Speaking States Cooperation Day.
They confirmed the importance of putting into practice the initiative aiming at establishment of a special foundation for support of Turkish culture and preservation of Turkish heritage in Baku in order to preserve the rich Turkish cultural heritage.
The leaders stated that they would promote the establishment of a union among universities to support the studies of the Turkish Academy in Astana.
They decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the independence of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in 2011 through joint activities.
Accordingly, they welcomed the proposal of Turkmenistan to organize a Turkish Speaking States cultural festival in Ashkhabad in 2011.
The leaders also expressed their satisfaction about the successful completion of the referendum in Kyrgyzstan on June 27, 2010. Highlighting importance of the parliamentary elections on October 10 for regional peace and stability, they confirmed that they would continue to support Kyrgyzstan during this transitional period.
The leaders invited international community to actively participate in the International Donor Conference for assistance to Kyrgyzstan to be organized by Kazakhstan in Almaty.
They expressed their deep regret over the raid of Israel to the humanitarian aid convoy sailing in international waters on May 31, 2010, causing the death of nine innocent civilians.
The leaders emphasized the importance of the settlement of the disagreement concerning the nuclear programme of Iran through dialogue and diplomacy for regional and global peace and stability.
The leaders also agreed to establish Turkish Speaking States Business Council in order to foster economic cooperation and decided to explore the possibility of the establishment of the ‘Turkic Speaking States’ Development Bank’ in Istanbul and a joint Insurance Company in order to support development of non-oil sectors and create new opportunities for private sector.
The first summit of Turkish Speaking Countries Cooperation Council will be held in Kazakhstan in 2011 and Kyrgyzistan will host the second summit in 2012.
ANKARA — Turkey has launched a project to produce an advanced naval submarine.
Turkey’s Defense Ministry and Navy have been working with Germany in the coproduction of four electric-diesel submarines. The coproduction effort has taken place with Germany’s ThyssenKrupp for the Type 214 submarine.
“This is a huge project that will make Turkey into a submarine manufacturer,” an official said.
The submarine project was expected to cost about $2.5 billion. Officials said the first platform could be delivered to the Navy in 2015.
The Navy has been building three of the submarines in Turkey. Officials said Turkey would also help design electronic subsystems for the underwater platforms.
Turkey has been engaged in several major naval projects. One called for the assembly of up to 11 small frigates in a project estimated at $2 billion.
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2010/me_turkey0873_09_08.asp. September 8, 2010
MP party chief Xavier Bertrand says that police searched the party headquarters in Paris on Wednesday as part of their ongoing investigation into the alleged involvement of Labour Minister Eric Woerth in the L’Oreal scandal.
French police probing a party financing scandal linked to L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt have searched the headquarters of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s majority UMP, the party said Thursday.
Police from the financial investigations squad searched the Paris headquarters on Wednesday afternoon, the party’s leader Xavier Bertrand said, in the latest development of the months-long scandal.
Several judicial investigations are under way into affairs linked to Bettencourt’s fortune, including allegations of tax evasion and illegal campaign funding that have implicated Labour Minister Eric Woerth.
The party’s director general Eric Cesari told AFP the police had come to look for “correspondance between Eric Woerth and Patrice de Maistre”, the manager of Bettencourt’s 17-billion-euro (22-billion-dollar) fortune.
Woerth was previously UMP treasurer and head fundraiser for Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign. He has been accused of a conflict of interest because his wife worked for Maistre, helping manage the billionairess’s estate.
Woerth denies any wrongdoing but has been politically weakened and the long-running investigation has undermined his and Sarkozy’s attempt to push through pensions reform.
Cesari said police had announced their visit and spent an hour a half at the headquarters checking archives, but did not take anything with them.
Police told AFP the search was ordered by a prosecutor in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre who is investigating various aspects of Bettencourt’s affairs and allegations implicating Woerth.
The magazine Paris Match reported on its website that investigators were searching for a letter sent by Woerth to Sarkozy in March 2007 in which Woerth called for Maistre to receive France’s top state honour, the Legion d’Honneur.
With U.S. Primacy In Decline, Nationalism Reshaping Balance Of Global Power
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
September 5, 2010
The post-Cold War new world order is rapidly breaking apart. Nations are returning to the ancient passions, rivalries and differences of past centuries.
Take Europe. The decades-old vision of a united pan-continental Europe without borders is dissolving. The cradle-to-grave welfare dream proved too expensive for Europe’s shrinking and aging population.
Cultural, linguistic and economic divides between Germany and Greece, or Holland and Bulgaria, remain too wide to be bridged by fumbling bureaucrats in Brussels. NATO has devolved into a euphemism for American expeditionary forces.
Nationalism is returning, based on stronger common ties of language, history, religion and culture. We are even seeing the return of a two-century-old European “problem”: a powerful Germany that logically seeks greater political influence commensurate with its undeniable economic superiority.
The tired Israeli-Palestinian fight over the future of the West Bank is no longer the nexus of Middle East tensions. The Muslim Arab world is now more terrified by the re-emergence of a bloc of old familiar non-Arabic, Islamic fundamentalist rivals.
With nuclear weapons, theocratic Iran wants to offer strategic protection to radical allies such as Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, and at the same time restore Persian glory. While diverse, this rogue bunch shares contempt for the squabbling Sunni Arab world of rich but defenseless Gulf petro-sheikdoms and geriatric state authoritarians.
Japan’s economy is still stalled. Its affluent population is shrinking and aging. Elsewhere in the region, the Japanese see an expanding China and a lunatic nuclear North Korea. Yet Japan is not sure whether the inward-looking United States is still credible in its old promise of protection against any and all enemies.
One of two rather bleak Asian futures seems likely. Either an ascendant China will dictate the foreign policies of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, or lots of new free-lancing nuclear powers will appear to deter China since it cannot count on an insolvent U.S. for protection.
Oil-rich Russia — deprived of its communist-era empire — seems to find lost imperial prestige and influence by being for everything that the U.S. is against. That translates into selling nuclear expertise and material to Iran, providing weapons to provocative states such as Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, and bullying neighbors over energy supplies.
Closer to home, Mexico has become a strange sort of friend. It devolves daily into a more corrupt and violent place than Iraq or Pakistan. The fossilized leadership in Mexico City shows no interest in reforming, either by opening its economy or liberalizing its political institutions.
Instead, Mexico’s very survival for now rests on cynically exporting annually a million of its impoverished and unhappy citizens to America. More interested in money than its own people, the Mexican government counts on the more than $20 billion in remittances that return to the country each year.
But American citizens are tired of picking up the tab to subsidize nearly 15 million poor illegal aliens. The growing hostility between the two countries is reminiscent of 19th-century tensions across the Rio Grande.
How is America reacting to these back-to-the-future changes?
Politically divided, committed to two wars, in a deep recession, insolvent and still stunned by the financial meltdown of 2008, our government seems paralyzed. As European socialism implodes, for some reason a new statist U.S. government wants to copy failure by taking over ever more of the economy and borrowing trillions more dollars to provide additional entitlements.
As panicky old allies look for American protection, we talk of slashing our defense budget. In apologetic fashion, we spend more time appeasing confident enemies than buttressing worried friends.
Instead of finishing our border fence and closing the southern border, we are suing a state that is trying to enforce immigration laws that the federal government will not apply. And as sectarianism spreads abroad, we at home still pursue the failed salad bowl and caricature the once-successful American melting pot.
But just as old problems return, so do equally old solutions. Once-stodgy ideas like a free-market economy, strong defense, secure borders and national unity are suddenly appearing fresh and wise.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. This was distributed by Tribune Media Services.
Turkey may be frustrated in its bid to become part of the European Union, but by the end of September, it will join Europe’s electric grid.
Most electric systems in continental Europe — including those in countries like Poland and Romania — have synchronized currents, allowing electricity to flow easily from country to country. But other nations, including Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Finland and until now, Turkey, have remained separate.
Turkey has been trying to connect for 10 years. Like Europe, it uses an alternating current, with the electrons dancing back and forth 50 times a second, but its system has been out of phase with the European grid.
Now, after extensive work by General Electric to enable Turkey’s system to connect, the country will join up for a one-year trial, according to theEuropean Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity.
The synchronization will include careful monitoring of the alternating current around Turkey and the ability to remotely monitor and control power plants — or even to dump electrical load – if Turkey’s phasing strays too far from Europe’s. If the marching bands start to disagree altogether, the systems can separate again.
Turkey’s electric links run to Bulgaria and Greece, and they have recently been upgraded to carry more energy. A result will be one of the largest interconnected grids in the world, said Luis M. Perez, a General Electric engineer involved in the project.
The join-up also has potentially positive implications for the environment, Mr. Perez said in a telephone interview from Spain.
Turkey, he said, has a lot of hydroelectric projects. In a wet year, it may have more hydro power than it can use; now that power can be exported. And as Europe adds intermittent renewable sources, like wind and solar, a hydroelectric system can function as a convenient shock absorber, throttling back or starting up very quickly to offset variations from other power sources.
Synchronizing with Europe also has positive economic effects, because it will improve the stability of the Turkish grid, according to G.E. The company would not disclose the cost of its work there.
At some point, a technician will enter some keystrokes on a computer, and some electrical switches will move and make the connection to Europe. G.E. is not saying exactly when that join-up will take place.
Azerbaijani state companies are planning to invest some $5bn in Turkey in the next two to three years, a minister has said.
