Category: Eastern Europe

Tatar Children’s Book on Conquest of Kazan in 1552 Outrages Russian

Paul Goble

Vienna, August 9 – A Tatar author’s richly illustrated children’s book on Ivan the Terrible’s conquest of Kazan in 1552 that asserts Tatarstan’s “struggle for the restoration of independence continues in our day” has prompted a Russian activist to demand that Moscow intervene to ban the book for “falsifying history to the detriment of Russia.”
On the “Svobodnaya pressa” website at the end of last week, Yan Stashkevich says that “children’s literature in Tatarstan is teaching that the Russian state is a mob of marauders, thieves and usurpers” and that the Tatar’s “struggle for the restoration of independence” has never ended (svpressa.ru/issue/news.php?id=12268).
And the Moscow journalist adds that this case is “not about ignoring the role of the Red Army in the victory over fascism and not about the revision of the results of the Second World War but about a war which ended … 500 years ago,” when the Russian tsar conquered the Kazan khanate.
Despite the antiquity of these events, Stashkevich continues, debates that “are no joke” have broken out in Tatarstan over these events. Moreover, he says, the Russian president’s commission on historical falsifications has been asked to look into the matter, a potentially disturbing extension of what Dmitry Medvedev said he was creating that body for.
The current “scandal” broke out following the publication in 5000 copies of a children’s book entitled “The Liberation Struggle of the Tatar People” by Nurulla Garif, a Tatar historian who describes the conquest of Kazan in 1552, the Christianization of the Muslims of the Middle Volga, and “’the five-hundred-year-long war” of the Tatars for independence from Russia.
According to Garif, Stashkevich says, this period has been one of “unceasing war against Russian ‘occupation,’” the Russian state “a mob of marauders, thieves and usurpers,” and Moscow’s representatives on the scene “’vengeful’” men capable of all sorts of crimes including burying Tatars who resist them alive.
The Moscow journalist says that at the end of his book, Garif calls on his young readers “not to follow stereotypes” but rather to “think about the lessons of history, in particular over the themes which consider ‘Moscow-Kazan relations.’” But to give them direction, Stashkevich says, Garif illustrates the page on which this appeal is made in a highly suggestive way.
On that page, Garif’s book shows “a black crow with two heads which reminds one of the state shield of Russia rapaciously attacking the tower of the Tatar queen Syuyumbika, the symbol of Tatarstan independence.” And given that clear message, Stashkevich suggests, it is no surprise that many Russians have been outraged.
Several weeks ago, one of their number Aleksandr Ovchinnikov, who teaches at a higher educational institution in Kazan, wrote to the Tatarstan republic procuracy asking that Garif’s book be examined by experts to determine whether its content was extremist and thus subject to a ban.
The republic procuracy immediately sent it to the Mardzhani Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, but scholars there, Stashkevich recounts, “shared the views of Nurulla Garif on the national path of the Tatar people and assured the procuracy” that the book in question did not contain any “call to national or religious hostility.”
Moreover, the Moscow journalist says, the Tatarstan historians accused Ovchinnikov of being engaged “in a provocation of destructive processes, pseudo-patriotism and the exacerbation of inter-ethnic antagonism.” After that, the procuracy dropped the case, and articles attacking Ovchinnikov began to appear “on the pages of the local press.”
These articles made it clear that “the scholars who had conducted the expert assessment of Garif’s book are his former colleagues with whom he had worked closely in the quite recent past,” Stashkevich reports, something that “casts doubt on ‘the independence’ of their expert assessment.”
However that may be, Ovchinnikov for his part has raised the possibility of sending Garif’s book to the Russian president’s commission on blocking attempts at the falsification of history and in the mean time “has again turned to the [Tatarstan] procuracy” which has again passed the volume to the same Institute of History, thus “closing the circle.”
Because Tatarstan’s Institute of History is headed by Rafael Khakimov, a longtime advisor to that republic’s president, Mintimir Shaimiyev, this incident might prove to be little more than yet another Russian probe against the latter, an effort to cast doubt on his loyalty to Moscow by questioning his ability to control his Middle Volga republic.
But even if that is so, this complaint and the readiness of some like Ovchinnikov to turn to the presidential commission is a disturbing indication of the way in which Moscow’s ostensible effort to deal with discussions of the Soviet role in World War II could rapidly become an attack on any independent thinking on other historical questions as well.
And because history is ultimately where many struggles about the present and future take place, both the original impulse between Dmitry Medvedev’s commission and the extension of the application of concern about “harm to Russia’s reputation” are a threat to far more than the righting of history: they are a threat to those who would make it as well.

http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/08/window-on-eurasia-tatar-childrens-book_09.html

August 10, 2009
Group Says Power Vertical Threatens Republics

06 August 2009

By Paul Goble / Special to The Moscow Times

A draft of Russia’s future nationality policy prepared by the Moscow Institute of Ethnology calls for “the systematic destruction of the federal and democratic foundations” of the Russian Federation and contains elements from Soviet practice that could lead to “the disintegration of the country,” Middle Volga activists say.

The World Kurultay of Bashkirs and the World Congress of Tatars released a joint appeal this week attacking the Moscow proposal in the name of “preserving the constitutional bases of the ethno-cultural diversity of the peoples of the Russian Federation.” Mordvin activists yesterday announced that they support the provisions of this declaration as well.

And while all three groups have been denounced as radical in the past, the decision of the Turkic Tatars and Bashkirs to issue this statement and the readiness of the Finno-Ugric Mordvins to join them suggest that the issues that the appeal raises reflect the views of many people in that region and perhaps those of others as well.

The Tatar-Bashkir declaration begins by asserting that “the situation that now exists in the country threatens the existence of the multi-national Russian Federation” because “authoritarian tendencies are increasing … and have begun to penetrate all spheres of sociopolitical and socioeconomic life.”

“Construction of the so-called ‘power vertical’ has resulted in the systematic destruction of federal and democratic foundations of the new Russian statehood that arose after the destruction of the totalitarian regime of the CPSU,” the appeal continues. The document then focuses on what its authors see as the primary threat.

“As is well-known, at one time in the USSR, the authorities persistently attempted to create ‘a single Soviet people’ without ethno-national characteristics,” they write. “[Such efforts] generated strong tension in society, especially in the sphere of inter-ethnic relations and, in the final analysis, led to the collapse of the country.”

Unfortunately, the document continues, not having learned from the past, “certain political forces of Russia today are repeating the very same mistakes by attempting to construct a so-called ‘all-civic Russian nation,’” an effort likely to entail equally “destructive” consequences for the country in the future.

The latest manifestation of such efforts, the appeal says, is the draft conception of a federal law titled “On the Foundations of Government Nationality Policy in the Russian Federation” and the explanatory supplements that were prepared by the Institute of Ethnology and that have been released with the draft concept paper.

The Tatar-Bashkir declaration with which the Mordvin group has associated itself points to five problems with the draft legislation. First, the declaration says, the concept “completely ignores the existence of national republics and their priority rights in the conduct of nationality policy in their own republics.”

As such, the Middle Volga appeal continues, the draft, in calling for “’new approaches to the development of legislation in the sphere of government nationality policy,’ is based on the leveling of all subjects of the Russian Federation, which in practice would mean the gradual liquidation of republics” within the country.

Second, the appeal notes, in the draft, “the role of the national republics in the resolution of nationality problems is subordinated to federal, regional and local national-cultural autonomies,” another violation of the historic rights of the people involved and a threat to their future existence.

Third, it continues, the draft conception ignores “the ethnic rights of the peoples of the Russian Federation” by declaring in what the Tatar and Bashkir appeal says are “abstract” and “meaningless” terms that the proposed legislation will promote “the unity of ethno-cultural and linguistic diversity.”

Fourth, the appeal says, the proposed legislation, while invoking the Declaration of the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination, in fact promotes precisely the “unification” and “centralization” of public sphere “in the sphere of nationality policy” that the Declaration is intended to counter.

And fifth, the appeal argues, the draft lays heavy stress “on the problems of national and ethnic minorities but at the same time minimizes issues concerning the ethnic development of republic-forming peoples,” yet another indication of the way in which the legislation would work to the detriment of the republics.

In its concluding section, the Tatar-Bashkir appeal says that in its current form, the draft prepared by the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology is directed at the covert revision of the Russian Constitution, “the destruction of the language, culture and history of the indigenous peoples” of the country, and their “assimilation” into “a Russian civic nation.”

Among the comments left on the Mariuver site after it posted the Tatar-Bashkir declaration were two that are especially intriguing. According to one, the draft legislation shows that “people in the Kremlin are living absolutely in another dimension” and are trying to unite “whole peoples” with “the poor Russians whom the entire world dislikes.”

And according to the other, “the last sentence of the population of Yugoslavia showed that very people identified as Yugoslavs. After several years, out of this country arose five new states. No one in our century is running to fulfill the inventions of those in power” as the authors of the draft seem to think.

Instead, the author of the post says, “even the Roma respect their own nation and hardly are likely to identify as [non-ethnic] Russians. That is all the more the case for [ethnic] Russians and Tatars. Besides, it seems that in recent times, [Moscow] has begun to respect the Tatars and Bashkirs — apparently as a result of [their] resistance to Russification.”

August 10, 2009
In Volatile Crimea, Tatars Bang The Drum For Land Return

Crimean Tatars continue to protest in front of the government building in Kyiv, demanding the return of land seized during World War II.

August 09, 2009

By Claire Bigg

For the 88th day in a row, Lyubov Halilova packed her banners and headed to government headquarters in central Kyiv.

The elderly Halilova has spent the last four months camped outside the building in the Ukrainian capital with some 20 other protesters, banging on drums, sounding horns, and calling on Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to hear their grievances.

The protesters are Crimean Tatars, the indigenous people of Crimea, and they are in Kyiv to voice their nation’s longstanding demand: the return of land seized during the World War II deportation of Tatars from the Crimean peninsula, in what is today Ukraine.

So far, Ukrainian officials have largely ignored the protest on their doorstep.

“There has been no progress,” sights Halilova. “Nobody is coming out, nobody is taking an interest in us.”

‘Please Go Home’

President Viktor Yushchenko last year set up a committee to settle the dispute. But critics accuse the new working group, which has yet to distribute a single plot of land, of deliberately dragging its feet.

Volodymyr Haptar, a spokesman for the Environment Ministry which oversees the committee, insists the issue is in capable hands.

Crimean Tatars gathered in Simferopol in May to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the mass deportation.

“We’re doing wearisome, difficult work trying to create a register of people who are to be allotted land. We are trying to determine the state of the land in these regions and to whom it belongs,” he told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. “Crimean Tatars are displaying their strength of will, but not everything can be settled through force and strikes. People, please go home. Sooner or later, this issue will be settled.”

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the mass deportation of Crimea’s Turkic, Muslim Tatars in May 1944 on grounds that they had allegedly collaborated with Nazi Germany.

In a three-day operation, the peninsula’s more than 180,000 Tatars were rounded up and loaded onto cattle trains bound for Central Asia and Siberia.

An estimated 40 percent of them died during the journey or in the first year of exile.

Although the Tatars were rehabilitated by the Kremlin and allowed to return in the late 1980s, neither the Soviet regime nor post-Soviet Ukraine has helped them resettle in their historical region.

Paradise Lost

Ismet Sheikh-Zade, a well-known Crimean Tatar artist, was born in Uzbekistan.

His parents had settled down in the Central Asian republic after being deported from Crimea as children, together with their entire families.

Today, Ismet and his parents are back in their ancestral land. But he says they are treated like intruders.

“Five Russian families now live in the house in Feodosia where my mother was born and from which she was deported. Six Russian families live in my father’s house in Belogorsk,” he says.

“We are not asking for these houses, because we know this would create a conflict. We’ll compromise and take empty land instead. But the surrounding population doesn’t understand that Crimean Tatars are making concessions by not demanding the restitution of their property,” Ismet says.

Some 270,000 Crimean Tatars have returned to the peninsula over the past two decades. Many live in chaotic settlements erected in recent years, sometimes without running water.

Although they now represent just 12 percent of their homeland’s total population, Crimean Tatars have been extremely vocal in lobbying for land and for recognition of the crimes perpetuated against their people.

They held the first-ever World Congress of Crimean Tatars this year on May 18, the 65th anniversary of the deportation. Some 20,000 protesters rallied in Crimea’s main city of Simferopol on the congress’ sidelines to renew demands for greater rights.

The Crimean Tatar community, however, is divided over how to promote its interests.

Like Mustafa Dzhemilyov, the head of the Crimean Tatars’ Mejlis representative body, some disapprove of the current protest in Kyiv and say Tatars should instead seek to resolve the land dispute through diplomatic channels.

“We were against it from the start. We formed a commission, and that commission is working,” he says. “There are 47 million people in this country. If everyone came to the ministers’ cabinet and started beating drums, I don’t think problems would get solved in our country.”

Others, weary of waiting, believe only rallies, hunger strikes, and other protests can draw attention to their plight.

Mounting Resentment

In May, Yushchenko ordered the creation of a special unit to investigate the deportation of Crimean Tatars and other minorities from the peninsula.

But this has done little to soothe feelings of anger and disappointment among Crimean Tatars.

Many say Yushchenko and his former ally Tymoshenko, whom Crimean Tatars massively supported during the 2004 Orange Revolution, have not made good on promises to improve their fate.

“They’ve gone to extreme lengths to repatriate in a peaceful manner, but I often wonder about their patience with the amount of resistance that they’ve had to push through,” says Dr. Greta Uehling, a U.S. anthropologist and an expert on Crimean Tatars.

“I worry about that in terms of the sheer frustration level of having tried so hard for so long and to continue to meet all these barriers and obstacles, to the point where their needs simply aren’t met,” Uehling says.

The simmering discontent among Crimean Tatars is particularly alarming since it is playing out on the backdrop of souring relations between Moscow and Kyiv.

Many Ukrainians accuse Moscow of plotting to stoke unrest in Crimea, an increasingly disputed region that is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and growing pro-independence sentiment among its majority ethnic Russian population.

Russia has reportedly handed passports to thousands of Crimean residents.

“I think the region is very unstable and very vulnerable to various parties’ attempts to bring it into their sphere of influence,” says Uehling. “On that score, I see things getting worse before they get better, because there is such intense interest and so many factions within Crimea that can be recruited onto various sides.”

The current protest in Kyiv illustrates how desperate many Crimean Tatars have become in recent years.

One month into their sit-in, seven of the protesters launched a hunger strike that lasted two weeks and resulted in the hospitalization of three participants.

The demonstrators have also accused Ukraine of genocide, and have issued a declaration threatening to disrupt the country’s efforts to integrate with the West and ensure the Crimean Tatar question becomes “the main problem” in Ukraine.

https://www.rferl.org/a/In_Volatile_Crimea_Tatars_Bang_The_Drum_For_Land_Return/1795804.html

August 10, 2009
The call of the pipes: Putin in Turkey

15:48 07/08/2009

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Fedyashin) – Things are now so mixed up in the pipe and gas business that it is difficult to see where pipes begin and politics ends.

Vladimir Putin’s one-day visit to Ankara was balanced on precisely such pipe and politics considerations. Plus the peaceful atom: Russia will now be building for Turkey its first nuclear power plant near Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast.

To judge from the scale and trend of the documents signed, Ankara will soon turn into a huge energy-handling hub between Russia and the European Union in the southern sector. Now in the north we have Germany and Nord Stream, and in the south, Turkey and South Stream. Two friendships, Nordic and Ottoman.

Turkey has long been a regional heavyweight, and Porte’s added “gas weight” will only strengthen it in this role. In recent years Ankara has been increasingly urging Russia to join in a regional forum it conceived for solving crucial Caucasian issues.

The Caucasus war greatly puzzled Ankara, which has close economic ties both with Georgia and Russia. As a NATO country, Turkey “quietly” supported Georgia, to which it sent its military instructors and is now supplying equipment. But Turkey does not want to lose, let alone reduce or weaken, its ties with Russia either, especially in the current hard economic times. After all, Moscow satisfies 64% of Turkey’s requirements in gas, and can deliver even more.

If that is not enough, let us bear in mind that more than one million Russians visit Mediterranean Turkish resorts every year, leaving more than $1.42 billion there. Moscow is Turkey’s top foreign economic partner – last year Turkey’s trade with Russia totaled $38 billion. In the next four years, Ankara hopes to bring the figure to $100 billion. One should not mess about with such things.

By offering itself as a regional platform for settling Russia’s “Caucasian problems,” Ankara is perfectly aware that the Kremlin will not conduct parleys with Mikheil Saakashvili.

But the Turks, offering their mediating services, very much hope to get Russia’s help in an area where such help cannot be dispensed with: That is a settlement in Nagorny Karabakh and normalization of relations with Armenia. In its turn, this means the involvement of Azerbaijan, which Turkey is also proposing to include, “on the kinship principle,” in the membership of the Caucasian regional forum. Unless the Nagorny Karabakh issue is settled, Turkey will be unable to normalize its relations with Armenia.

Turkey is being prodded in the same direction by the European Union, or rather Turkey’s hope for admission to the EU (one of Brussels’ conditions is settlement of relations with Armenia), and its own regional economic interests. But the way to a Turkish-Armenian diplomatic thaw is blocked by Azerbaijan, which has long staked out its claim: It will not welcome Turkish diplomatic overtures to Armenia as long as the Nagorny Karabakh issue remains unsolved.

Only Russia, and this is something everyone realizes, can push Armenia to a softer stance on Nagorny Karabakh. True, Russia will never nudge Armenia to surrender all its interests in Nagorny Karabakh, implying its return to Azerbaijan with broad autonomy rights. That is especially true in the wake of recognizing Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s independence. So, whether we like it or not, our friendship will only thrive on gas, oil and the peaceful atom.

South Stream will make Russia and its customers less dependent on transit countries, in particular, Ukraine, because Turkey will not be a transit country technically. In 2013, the pipe will transport 63 billion cubic meters of gas. Investments in the project are estimated at 25 billion euros. Contractors are Russia’s Gazprom and Italy’s ENI, acting on a parity basis. In fact, South Stream’s inauguration ceremony was an affair for three: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi also arrived for the occasion.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

August 8, 2009
Geopolitical Diary: Shades of a Second War

August 6, 2009

One year on from the outbreak of war between Georgia and Russia, events precipitating that conflict bear a striking resemblance to the situation today.
First, it must be said that things are never quiet in the Caucasus. Russo-Georgian relations are cold in the best of times, and they certainly are not going to warm while the pro-Western government that took power Georgia in the 2003 Rose Revolution remains in place. Under this “Rose” government, Tbilisi has courted the West politically, economically and militarily in order to solidify its independence of Russia, with the goal of joining the NATO alliance – something that Russia has resisted at every turn.
In 2008, the Russians shifted from resistance to invasion. The reasons are many, but one stands out: 2008 marked the final dissolution of Serbia, with Western institutions recognizing the independence of Kosovo. Serbia was Russia’s last ally in Europe, and the idea that Russia’s protests could not sway the West’s actions in the least was daunting for Moscow. Russia had to prove that not only was it still relevant, but that it could and would move militarily against an American and European ally. The target was Georgia, and the five-day war that followed was as decisive as it was swift.
Events appear to be moving along a similar track in the early days of August 2009.
Last month, following a trip to Georgia, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden gave an interview in which he called Russia out not only for being weak but, to put it bluntly, doomed to collapse. Needless to say, the Russians might be feeling the urge to prove Biden wrong in the court of global opinion. Russian officials are loudly and regularly warning that they stand ready for war, while Vladislav Surkov – a Kremlinite arguably second in power only to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin himself – has spent some personal time of late in South Ossetia, the tiny (Russian-allied) breakaway province of Georgia that was the proximate cause for the 2008 war.
Biden’s comments are only one possible reason why the war drums are being beaten; there are others.
The United States appears to be sliding toward conflict with Iran, and Russia has invested no small amount of political capital in bolstering the Iranians against the Americans. In Moscow’s mind, a United States fixated on the Persian Gulf is one that cannot fixate on Russia, and a United States that is at war with Iran is one that cannot stop Russia from adjusting borders in places like Georgia.
And of course, there is Georgia itself. President Mikhail Saakashvili is no stranger to dramatic performances, and as the leader of a fractured country with next to no military capability (even before Georgia’s defeat in August 2008), he has few means of countering Russia at all. One option is to provoke a crisis with his northern neighbor in the hopes that the West will ride to the rescue. Considering what happened a year ago, this is perhaps not the wisest strategy, but it is not as though Saakashvili – personally or as Georgia’s president – has a wide array of options to peruse.
War is not a process that Russia would choose carelessly, even if it would be a very, very easy war to win. What simply doesn’t fit in current circumstances is the boldness with which the Russians are acting. They have all but stated that war is imminent, they are backing the Iranians to the hilt, sending top Kremlin strategists to the region to coordinate with allies, and have even resumed nuclear submarine patrols off the east coast of the United States. The Russians have a well-earned reputation for being far more circumspect than this in the shell game that is international relations. It is almost as if all of this is simply noise designed to keep the Americans off balance while something else, something no one is watching, is quietly put into play.
STRATFOR doesn’t have a good answer for this. All we can say is that the Russians are up to something – and if it is not a war, it is something big enough that a war would seem to make a good distraction. Now that bears some watching.

August 8, 2009
Turkish-Russian Grand Bargain in Energy Cooperation

Turkish-Russian Grand Bargain in Energy Cooperation

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 152

August 7, 2009

By: Saban Kardas

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s August 6 visit to Ankara marked a new era for “enhanced multi-dimensional partnership,” between Ankara and Moscow. Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed some twenty agreements covering energy, trade and other fields. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi also attended part of the talks between Erdogan and Putin, considering the involvement of Italian companies in some of these projects. The most remarkable dimension of the various joint projects concerns energy cooperation, most notably Turkey’s expression of support for Russia’s South Stream project (Anadolu Ajansi, www.cnnturk.com, www.ntvmsnbc.com, August 6).

In oil transportation, Russia committed to participate in the planned Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline (SCP), connecting the Turkish Black Sea city of Samsun to the Mediterranean terminal Ceyhan. Turkey has solicited Russian participation in the SCP, which will bypass the congested Turkish Straits. Moscow has proven reluctant, and has instead promoted another bypass option through Burgas-Alexandroupolis between Bulgaria and Greece. Meanwhile, Turkey took further steps to make the SCP attractive for the Russian side, by linking this project with the Turkish-Israeli-Indian energy partnership (EDM, November 25, 2008).

Erdogan expressed his pleasure with the Russian decision to commit its crude. Ankara can consider this development as its greatest success in this grand bargain, given that Turkey has worked to convert Ceyhan, where the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline also terminates, into a global energy hub. However, Putin did not rule out interest in Burgas-Alexandroupolis, and instead emphasized that the two pipelines might be complementary in meeting the growing demand for export routes. This statement raises questions about how committed Russia will be to the SCP, given that Russian companies own the majority of shares in the other Burgas-Alexandroupolis option.

In terms of gas cooperation, Turkey will allow Russia to conduct explorations and feasibility studies in the Turkish exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea, as part of Russian plans to construct South Stream. Since this move comes against the background of Turkey’s decision to sign the rival Nabucco pipeline agreement last month, it raises many questions, as to how it will affect Nabucco, which Turkey considers a “strategic priority,” as well as European energy security issues. Despite the questions surrounding its feasibility and high costs, as well as its negative implications for Nabucco, Erdogan maintained that both projects contribute to diversification efforts.

It appears that the “grand bargain” was between the SCP and Blue Stream. Ahead of the meeting, Yuri Ushakov, the Deputy Head of the Russian Government Staff said that “Turkey made concessions in South Stream and we made concessions in SCP,” but added that he had doubts over the SCP’s feasibility (Anadolu Ajansi, August 5). A statement from Berlusconi’s office also claimed that he had helped broker a rapprochement between both countries on these two issues (Hurriyet Daily News, August 6). However, domestically, there are concerns that in this “exchange” of concessions, Turkey did not gain much. The SCP’s importance was inflated, because it was developed by business interests close to the government (www.turksam.org.tr, August 7). Another gas deal concerned Ankara’s request to renew the contract under which it purchases Russian gas through the Western pipeline via the Balkans. Erdogan announced that the contract (which expires in 2011) will be renewed for 20 years. Turkey had complained about the high prices and the leave-or-pay conditions in its gas deals with Russia. Putin said it was renewed on favorable terms to Turkey, but the contract’s details are unclear.

Erdogan also said that they discussed the extension of Blue Stream II to transport Russian gas to Israel, Lebanon and even Cyprus. Blue Stream, running underneath the Black Sea, is the second route carrying Russian gas to Turkey. Moscow previously raised the possibility that it could use Blue Stream II in order to transport gas to Europe, but this option was rejected, since it contradicted Nabucco and Russia sought to use Turkey only as a transportation route. Now, Ankara wants to revive it as part of a North-South corridor. Based on the leaders’ statements, it appears that the existing capacity of Blue Stream might be improved and gas could be transferred to the Mediterranean through this pipeline.

However, although Erdogan praised this development as another major success, there is no guarantee that Russia will grant “re-export rights,” which indicates that if Blue Stream II is implemented, Moscow will continue to view Turkish territory as a mere conduit for its gas, which raises the question: how will Turkey benefit from the agreement? Russian priorities also involve Turkey’s first nuclear power plant tender, which was awarded to a Russian-Turkish consortium. As the original price was too high, the tender has long awaited cabinet approval (EDM, January 26). Meanwhile, the Russian side lowered the price, and offered a compromise. Prior to Putin’s visit, it was expected that with further “bargaining,” a final deal might be reached, but apparently it failed. Nevertheless, Ankara and Moscow signed protocols regarding energy cooperation, including the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, early notification of accidents, exchange of information on facilities, and to continue talks on the nuclear tender.

The most controversial development is perhaps Ankara’s support for South Stream. Erdogan reiterated his belief that Nabucco and South Stream are complementary, yet turned a blind eye to several Russian officials’ (including Putin) statements to the contrary. It is assumed in Ankara that growing European energy demand will accommodate both projects; but this ignores the competition between both projects over the same downstream markets. Moreover, the Turkish side fails to appreciate the challenges Russia is facing in investing in its domestic gas industry, and acts on the assumption that “Russia has enormous reserves,” while failing to realize that Russia is also planning to tap into the same upstream producers, namely Central Asian and Caspian gas, just as the Nabucco project envisages (www.ntvmsnbc.com, August 6).

Putin also added that a consensus was reached on Russia building gas storage facilities in the Salt Lake. Taken together with the announced joint investments between Turkish and Russian firms, including Gazprom, it is unclear whether the Turkish government recognizes the consequences of these decisions. Russia has effectively used the practice of co-opting the gas infrastructure of transport and consumer countries, as part of its efforts to monopolize downstream markets. It is unclear how this penetration into the Turkish grid might affect Ankara’s future energy policies.

https://jamestown.org/program/turkish-russian-grand-bargain-in-energy-cooperation/

August 8, 2009