Category: Southern Caucasus

Turkey and Azerbaijan agree on purchase and sale agreement on gas

Turkey and Azerbaijan agreed on purchase and sale part of the intergovernmental agreement, adding that, however, the parties needed time to work more on transit passages part of the agreement.

Turkish energy & natural resources minister said on Friday that Turkey and Azerbaijan agreed on purchase and sale part of the intergovernmental agreement, adding that, however, the parties needed time to work more on transit passages part of the agreement.

Speaking at a news conference regarding the Turkey-Azerbaijan Natural Gas Purchase, Sale and Transit Agreement, Energy& Natural Resources Minister Taner Yildiz said the parties carried out the negotiation process on five topics, underlining that they could not agree on every issue.

Yildiz said the teams would maintain talks and noted that a series of agreements would be signed.

He said there would be a transportation agreement regarding intergovernmental agreement, purchase and sale agreement and transit passage of gas, and noted that some agreements were initialed and some of them were about to be initialed.

“We have agreed on the intergovernmental agreement in principle and in detail. We agreed on issues regarding purchase and sale agreements. Transit passage is a 130 page text. We need time to work on it.”

Azerbaijani Energy Minister Natik Aliyev said there was no difference of opinion, noting that the parties would negotiate the matters and sign them.

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May 1, 2011
Turkey invests $6 billion in Azerbaijani economy

Azerbaijan, Baku, April 28 / Trend, A. Akhundov /

Turkey ranks first for investments in Azerbaijan’s non-oil sector, Azerbaijani Economic Development Ministry Administration Chief Samir Veliyev said in Baku today at a conference on the Azerbaijani-Turkish cooperation on the topic of ‘Socio-Economic Development in the Globalizing World”.

“Today, more than one thousand Turkish companies successfully operate in different sectors of the Azerbaijani economy,” Valiyev said. “The amount of Turkish investments in Azerbaijan has hit about $2 billion since 2002,” he added.

The potential of Turkish-Azerbaijani relations allows significant increase to the current volume of trade turnover, the head of the Main Department on Foreign Economic Relations of the Turkish State Planning Organization Metin Eker said.

“Trade turnover between the two countries in 2010 reached $2.5 billion, whereas in 2005 this figure hit $800 million,” Eker said.

He said that in general the Azerbaijani entrepreneurs’ investments in Turkey amounted to three billion dollars, and “the main spheres of the Azerbaijani businessmen in Turkey are the petrochemical complex and tourism”.

The total volume of Turkish investments in Azerbaijan’s economy hit $6 billion, Eker said.

So far, Turkish companies have signed contracts on 237 projects in Azerbaijan.

“We believe that these figures will increase. Turkey is pleased with Azerbaijan’s economic success,” Eker said.

Reports on economic models used by the Turkish State Planning Organization, on the role of the balance model in strengthening the scientific basis of socio-economic policy, management, monitoring of investment programs and the fight with poverty were presented at the conference.

via Turkey invests $6 billion in Azerbaijani economy | Economy & Business news | Trend.

April 30, 2011
Construction of infrastructure to sell electricity to turkey will cost $500 million

YEREVAN, April 26, /ARKA/. Sevak Sarukhanian, head of Noravank think-tank, told a roundtable today on nuclear energy issues that construction of infrastructure to transport Armenian electricity to neighboring Turkey would cost $500 million.

He said the available infrastructure is not enough to meet the constantly growing electricity needs in eastern Turkey. According to him, power consumption in Turkey has been growing at an average annual rate of 7% since 1950 along with economic growth. He said electricity needs in eastern Turkey also grow 7% a year.

He said serious investments in development of the infrastructure would raise its capacity up to 1000 megawatt and that would facilitate sales of electricity to Turkey. According to him, the available infrastructure is enough to sell 300 megawatt electricity. The cost of such a deal would be $120 million but it would not bring profits to Armenia. He said real results could be achieved only after Turley opens its border with Armenia.

Turkey and Armenia have had no diplomatic ties since Armenia became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991. Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in a show of support for its ally, Azerbaijan, which had a dispute with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, the ethnic Armenian enclave of Azerbaijan. There are several sensitive issues complicating the establishment of normal relations between the two countries, particularly, Ankara’s blatant support of Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution process and Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the mass killings of Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman Empire as a genocide. -0-

via Construction of infrastructure to sell electricity to turkey will cost $500 million: expert | 26/04/2011 21:54 | News agency ARKA – Armenian news.

April 27, 2011
Expert: Washington brushes aside anything that can harm relations with Turkey

PanARMENIAN.Net – Gaidz Minassian, associate researcher at the Foundation of Strategic Research, said that the agreement between Turkey and Brazil on Iran, in 2010, opened a new stage of negotiations between the U.S. and Turkey.

“For Washington, Iran has become a strategic priority. In Ankara, the Iranian issue allows it to strengthen its regional influence among Muslims states,” Minassian told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.

“Turks and Americans have thus found a common ground to cooperate on the Iranian problem. That is why Washington brushes aside anything that can harm relations with Turkey. Other issues are secondary, including the Armenian Genocide. Hence, the burial of resolution H.Res 252 in the U.S. Congress, the appointment of Francis J. Ricciardone as the U.S. ambassador to Turkey despite the Senate hold, Americans’ confidence of the ratification of the protocols signed between Turkey and Armenia and the statements by Barack Obama on April 24 without the Genocide word are part of U.S. strategic partnership with Turkey,” he said.

via Expert: Washington brushes aside anything that can harm relations with Turkey – PanARMENIAN.Net.

April 27, 2011
Turkish university to offer Armenian language courses

An Istanbul university’s language academy is organizing the only courses in Armenian at the post-secondary level as part of an effort to enhance regional dialogue between businesspeople and academics.

“Turkey has become a major player in the region, socially, culturally, economically and politically. Thus we decided to teach regional languages rather than the classic foreign languages such as English or French,” said Serdar Dinler, director of Kadir Has University’s Center for Lifelong Learning, which will start teaching the courses in May at its Neighboring Languages Academy.

The new courses aim to enable Turkish people of all ages and backgrounds to speak directly to their Armenian counterparts without resorting to a third language such as English, Dinler told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review in a phone interview Monday.

“We have plenty of businesspeople who trade with Armenia, as well as academics, journalists and the like who work with or on Armenia,” Dinler said, adding that relations could be boosted further if such people could directly speak in Armenian.

The courses, which will be taught by a yet-to-be-hired Armenian doctoral student, will be the only of their kind at a Turkish university in Turkey, according to Dinler. The center already provides Greek and Russian courses and plans to start ones in other language as soon as funding is available.

“Projects for Arabic, Farsi and Kurdish language courses are also ready, and we are looking for national or international sponsors to fund them,” he said.

A team from Kadir Has is currently preparing the curriculum for the Armenian course and reviewing applications from Armenian doctoral students at Yerevan University in order to select one who will come to Turkey to continue his or her research and teach the language course in the evenings. According to Dinler, many Armenian doctoral students are conducting research on Turkey.

The center director said they want “an Armenian from Armenia to teach the language” rather than a student of Armenian origin living in Turkey because there are differences between the language spoken in Armenia and that spoken by the Armenian minority living in Turkey, and because it provides an opportunity to develop relations.

“By coming to Turkey, the Armenian [doctoral] student will see Turkish culture and meet people, thus also developing academic and cultural dialogue,” Dinler said.

The Armenian language courses will be open to everyone, regardless of age or professional background, he said. “There is plenty of interest even from academics at other universities who are conducting research on the Caucasus.”

The courses will be launched by the end of May as part of a $23,500 project funded by the Marshall Fund’s Black Sea Trust. The one-year grant will allow four to five Armenian language courses consisting of 47 hours of instruction to be offered, Dinler said.

The school intends “to continue teaching Armenian even after the project time period [ends]” using its own resources, Dinler said.

April 26, 2011
Russian, Turkish moves increase Armenian isolation

Signs of shifting balances in the Caucasus have been sending alarming signals to Armenia, strengthening its feeling of isolation as the result of new moves by key regional players Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Russia has recently made efforts to improve its relations with Azerbaijan, while Turkey has sought to mend fences between Baku and Tehran over Iranian-Armenian relations, an irritant for Azerbaijan.

Iran provides an important economic outlet for Armenia, which suffers from the blockade by Turkey and Azerbaijan. The Islamic Republic supports its Christian neighbor politically as it feels its large Azerbaijani minority makes it vulnerable in relation to Baku. Ethnic Azerbaijanis are the largest minority in Iran, comprising about a quarter of the population.

Foreign ministers of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Iran met two weeks ago in the northwestern Iranian city of Urmia to try to improve relations.

Efforts by Russia, another country with close relations with Armenia, to improve its ties with Azerbaijan have not gone unnoticed in Ankara, where Turkish diplomats note that the war in Georgia in 2008 has affected Moscow’s overall policies in the Caucasus. Russia wants to improve its relations with Azerbaijan in order to further encircle Georgia, and to create another avenue for reaching out to Iran, the diplomats said. A recent agreement signed between Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran is seen as another indicator of Moscow’s new policies.

The three countries agreed in February to form a joint venture that will be responsible for constructing a 350-kilometer railroad line from Qazvin, northwest of Tehran, to Rasht and the Caspian Sea port of Astara in Azerbaijan. The new line will drastically reduce the distance by rail between Tehran and Baku, while creating a much shorter route between Russia and Iranian ports.

Russia has meanwhile been equally active in trying to find a solution to the ongoing Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, Turkish sources told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. “Not all the details are shared with us. But we understand that Russian diplomacy has brought some creative ideas to overcome the deadlock,” one source said.

Trilateral meeting held in Turkish

When Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Memmedyarov started to address his Turkish and Iranian counterparts in English at their first trilateral meeting, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu immediately interrupted, asking him to speak in his native language.

Turks can understand the Azeri dialect, which is believed to be spoken as a first language by about 20 percent of the Iranian population. When Memmedyarov started to speak in his native language, all participants with the exception of two people from the Iranian delegation put aside their headphones for simultaneous translation.

The meeting two weeks ago was held in the Iranian city of Urmia, which is also the capital of the West Azerbaijan Province.

“The fact that the trilateral meeting took place in Urmia has a very symbolic importance,” a Turkish official told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

Turkey wanted to convey to Iran the message that its Azerbaijani minority is not a liability but an asset in its relations with Baku.

Ankara also wanted to send the message to both Baku and Tel Aviv that Turkish-Azerbaijani strategic relations cannot be replaced with Israeli-Azerbaijani ones. The strain in Turkish-Azerbaijani ties due to Ankara’s effort to normalize its relations with Yerevan has resulted in improved cooperation between Tel Aviv and Baku.

Despite the importance of these symbolic messages, the Turkish government would like to see concrete projects materialize between the three countries.

“An economic committee will be set up for the development of economic and trade relations through joint ventures, modernization of border gates and facilitation of customs and application of preferential trade between Turkey, Iran and Azerbaijan,” read the joint communique released following the meeting.

The U.N. sanctions applied against Iran due to its controversial nuclear program will, however, undoubtedly place serious constraints on trilateral economic cooperation

April 26, 2011