Istanbul – Turkey has begun increasing the volumes of gas it is exporting to neighbouring Greece, after cutting exports by two thirds without warning last week, a spokesman for Greek state gas company DEPA told dpa Monday.
The spokesman confirmed that the volume of gas DEPA received was expected to return to normal in coming days. They assumed that the cut was due to extremely cold weather in Turkey and much of south-eastern Europe.
‘With temperatures rising were expecting the flow of gas to return to normal,’ he said.
Last week’s cut in exports, starting on February 1st, was the second time in a month that Turkey had reduced the volume of gas it exports to Greece.
Greece annually imports up to 800 million cubic metres of Azeri gas from Turkey under a deal signed in 2002, with imports beginning in 2007 following the construction of a pipeline link between the two countries.
via Turkey increases gas exports to Greece – Monsters and Critics.
Turkey’s chief EU negotiator explains why his country wants to join an EU in the midst of a deepening economic crisis.
There is a change going on in the European political landscape. Although their agendas vary from country to country, political parties appealing to some form of traditional or nationalistic values have recently garnered significant footholds in the parliaments of Finland, Norway, Holland, Hungary, Sweden and Italy.
There is often one common concern that unites these parties: Can Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, join the European Union?
Turkey is at the doorstep of Europe and it wants to come in. Despite growing anti-Muslim sentiments and a deepening economic downturn in Europe, Turkey is still negotiating to become a full member of the European Union.
On this episode of Talk to Al Jazeera, we ask Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s minister for European affairs and its chief EU negotiator, if Turkey is still as interested in joining the EU as it previously was or whether its perspective has changed.
He explains why, for Turkey, the process of joining the EU is “more important than the end result” and why aspiring to the standards of the European Union has been critical to his country’s development.
Bagis describes the EU as “the grandest peace project in the history of mankind” and shares his views on how Turkey would be able to “turn that continental peace project into a global one”.
He also discusses press freedom and reform of the judiciary; the issue of the Armenian ‘genocide’ and Turkey’s relationship with France in the wake of the French senate’s decision to approve a bill that will make it illegal to deny that the mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 was genocide; and Turkish foreign policy and his country’s position in the region.”If we had joined [the EU] we would have warned them and prevented them from going into these difficult [economic] situations. So maybe we could have prevented Europe from going down. Joining Europe doesn’t mean we are assuming their debts, that doesn’t mean we are assuming their unemployment. Right now, Turkey has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe and the fact that we will join the European Union, is not something that will happen tomorrow. By the time Turkey completes all negotiations, by the time all the chapters are completed, I’m sure this economic crisis will be over, because no crisis lasts forever. But even in the case that there are still difficulties, Turkey can contribute positively to closing the gap.”
KASTANIES, Greece—Greece announced on Monday that it will soon begin building a 6-mile-long (10-kilometer-long) fence topped with razor wire on its border with Turkey to deter illegal immigrants.
Thousands of illegal immigrants cross from Turkey into Greece at this point each year, often traveling from there to other parts of Europe.
Greek Public Order Minister Christos Papoutsis went to the border village of Kantanies on Monday to announce that work on the 13-foot-tall (4-meter-tall) fence will start next month and is expected to be finished by September at a cost of more than euro3 million ($4 million). It will stretch from Kastanies to the Greek village of Nea Vyssa, near the northeastern town of Orestiada.
“This is an opportunity for us to send a clear message … to all the EU that Greece is fully compliant with its border commitments,” Papoutsis told reporters. “Traffickers should know that this route will be closed to them. Their life is about to get much harder.”
Greece is one of the 26 European nations in the Schengen Area, which has external border controls but not ones within the zone. Since Greece is on the southeastern edge of the area, and Turkey has not signed the Schengen Agreement, Greece is required to maintain its border controls.
During Papoutsis’ visit to Kastanies, about 40 people protested nearby, saying the fence is a violation of human rights and should not be built at a time when Greece is suffering a deep financial
crisis that has led to punishing austerity measures and high unemployment. About 200 riot police stood by, but no violence occurred during the demonstration.
Papoutsis said the fence will be coupled with a network of fixed night-vision cameras providing real-time footage to the new command center.
Most of Greece’s 125-mile (200 kilometer) border with Turkey runs along a river known as Evros in Greece and Meric in Turkey. The new fence, which Turkey’s government has not opposed, will block a short stretch of dry land between the two countries. Greece already is receiving emergency assistance at the Evros border from the EU border protection agency, Frontex.
On Monday, three men seen entering Greece at the point where the fence will be built told The Associated Press they are illegal immigrants who fled Syria’s violence.
One of the men, who identified himself only as Said, 24, said the trio had been walking for seven days, and that he hopes to reach an uncle in Hungary, which also is a member of Europe’s Schengen Area.
via Greece stepping up security on border with Turkey – San Jose Mercury News.
Large swaths of Southeastern Bulgaria were flooded on Monday after the breaking of water dams. Photo by Defense Ministry
Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry has sent a note warning the authorities of Turkey and Greece about the overflowing of major water dams on Bulgarian territory.
Bulgaria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a note this morning, informed Greek and Turkish authorities that the Ivailovgrad water reservoir and the Studen Kladenetz water reservoir will begin to overflow.
The volume of water expected to discharge from the dam is 268 cubic meters per second.
According to Bulgaria’s National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (NIMH), February 6 2012 will see rain in southern Bulgaria while positive temperatures will cause snow at altitudes of less than 1500 meters to melt.
Rain will turn to snow in the eastern regions and wind will increase, in places exceeding 15 to 20 meters a second.
During the precipitation period, snow across the country will rise by 20 to 50cm, and in the Rhodope region, rainfall will reach – and in places surpass – 50 to 100 liters a square meter.
Over the next few days, minimum temperatures in most areas will be between minus 15 and minus 20 degrees Celsius, in some places even lower.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will give Bulgaria’s southern neighbors immediate notice of any change in water status and risk of flooding,” Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry says.
via Bulgaria: Bulgaria Warns Turkey, Greece about Overflowing Dams – Novinite.com – Sofia News Agency.
Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused of stage-managing a visit to a construction site by bussing in fake “workers” to make him look more popular.
Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused of stage-managing a visit to look more popular Photo: AP
By Henry Samuel, Paris
The accusations against the French president come ahead of elections he is polled to lose.
Mr Sarkozy, 57, received a warm response from workers when he visited the social housing construction site in Mennecy, Essonne, near Paris on Thursday.
However, yesterday it was claimed that half the crowd of “workers” who braved the cold to meet the President had been specially drafted in for the occasion and had nothing to do with the building work.
“I only recognised two or three but I didn’t know the others,” Ambroise, one bona fide bricklayer told Europe 1 radio.
“They wanted more people around Nicolas Sarkozy,” he said, adding that there were twice as many workers than usual.
Bosses on sites from other locations had ordered staff to attend. They were then told to “pretend to work in front of the press,” he said.
In theory, none of them should have been working due to the unusually cold weather, and the place was deserted shortly after Mr Sarkozy’s departure.
“It’s total nonsense, it’s ludicrous,” said the Elysée.
Management of the construction company in charge of the site “categorically denied” any stage-management, saying “only the 67 workers working daily on the site, were present, as well as support staff.”
But a spokesman for the opposition Socialists slammed the visit. “If correct, this episode says a lot about the relationship with the truth the outgoing president keeps with the French,” said Claude Bartolone.
“It is proof of his taste for permanent trickery.”
The far-Right National Front wrote: “The workers are abandoning him, extras will have to do.”
The controversy could not have come at a worse time for Mr Sarkozy, a day after an Ifop poll placed him behind Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader, in voting intentions among France’s active workforce.
Miss Le Pen stood to win 24 per cent of the vote, with Mr Sarkozy on 18 per cent.
François Hollande, the Socialist candidate, was in first place with 27 per cent.
Mr Sarkozy is still tipped to reach round two in nationwide polls.
This is not the first time the French president has been accused of stage-managing visits. In September 2009, factory workers at the Faurecia auto parts company in Normandy said they had been hand-picked to appear alongside the diminutive leader because they were short.
The Elysée dismissed the reports as “grotesque and absurd”, despite the fact that staff confirmed they had been selected because they were “no bigger than the President”.
Turkey may have banned the flight repatriating the bodies of four French soldiers killed in Afghanistan from crossing its air space in retaliation for the Armenian genocide bill recently passed by the French Senate.
Pro-Turkish demonstrators in Paris last month Reuters/Charles Platiau
Ankara has introduced the first sanctions against France in response to the both houses of the French parliament approving a law that declared it illegal to deny that an anti-Armenian genocide took place in Turkey during World War I.
Dossier: AfPak news and analysis
Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan has replaced his official car, a Renault, by a Ford as a first sanction on France, according to RFI Istanbul correspondent Jérôme Bastion.
More seriously, two French warships and a military plane have had to change their route after being denied access to Turkish waters or airspace, the French ambassador to Turkey has told RFI.
France will no longer ask for permission for military missions to cross over Turkey or through its waters until the spat about the law is resolved, he said.
However, a flight carrying a French minister was allowed to fly over Turkey, the embassy says.
“So it is highly likely that the flight that was redirected was the one that was bringing back the bodies of the soldiers killed in Afghanistan on 20 January,” RFI’s website in French says, adding that the minister’s flight was probably that of Defence Minister Gérard Longuet, who went to Kabul on 21 January.
Automatic authorisation for the French military to dock in or overfly Turkey was suspended when the National Assembly approved the Armenian genocide law.
A ban on ministers passing through has been threatened but is not due to take effect until the Constitutional Council rules on whether the law is valid.
via Turkey may have banned dead French soldiers’ flight over Armenian genocide law – France – Turkey – RFI.
