Category: Middle East

Turkey’s big thirst for new power

Turkey’s big thirst for new power

Florian Neuhof

Turkey is in a rush to grow its energy sector. And recent news that the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, known as Taqa, will invest heavily in Turkish coal-fired power plants shows how serious Ankara is taking this commitment.

The deal, announced at the start of the year, will see Taqa build and operate a power generation base totalling 7,000 megawatts, or about 10 per cent of Turkey’s electricity needs by the time the plants are completed.

Turkey’s energy minister, Taner Yildiz, is keen to emphasise that efforts will be taken to minimise the environmental impact of the country’s power sector.

The plants will be fed with lignite, a soft brown coal reviled by environmentalists for the emissions its use entails. Lignite is found in Turkey’s soil and offers some relief in the complicated task of securing hydrocarbons from abroad.

Turkey is dependent on imports for 91 per cent of its oil and 98 per cent of its natural gas and it relies heavily on Iran and Russia for its supplies. It is therefore keen to push the share of electricity produced from gas from about 50 per cent to less than 30 per cent in the next decade and to diversify its hydrocarbon sources.

Turkey has reluctantly complied with United States and European Union demands to reduce imports from Iran as part of a new round of sanctions, but its dependence on Iranian supply has meant it has refused to cut economic ties with the country.

Nevertheless, Turkey has announced it will import more Saudi Arabian and Libyan crude to counter the effect of the sanctions on Iran and the trend for Arabian Gulf oil to depart to Asia.

Turkey’s confrontational stance with Syria, Tehran’s long-time ally, could also endanger imports from Iran.

Iraq’s immense oil and gas reserves are another source of hydrocarbons, and a pipeline already flushes 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iraqi crude across the border to the Turkish harbour of Ceyhan. But, rather than focusing on good relations with Baghdad, Ankara seems intent on carving out its own oil and gas base in Iraq by encouraging the autonomous Kurdish north in its efforts to create an independent energy sector.

The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and Turkey are close to signing a deal under which the Turks will build production and pipeline capacity in Kurdistan, enabling the Kurds to export their hydrocarbons outside the Iraqi infrastructure.

The KRG’s efforts to take control of its resources is a huge source of irritation to Iraq’s central government. While closer ties with Erbil can serve to secure a great deal of oil and gas supply, the uncertainty of the geopolitics can also undermine future security of supply.

Turkey pays attention to its gas supply in particular. With electricity use projected to rise dramatically in the coming decades, adding further gas imports is crucial in spite of efforts to reduce its share in power generation.

But Turkey also has ambitions to establish itself as a gas-trading hub between the Middle East, gas rich Azerbaijan and Europe. Turkey and Azerbaijan have agreed on the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline project that will connect the latter’s Shah Deniz II gasfield development with the Bosphorus.

Turkish demand for gas stood at about 125,000 cubic metres a day at the end of last year. Before it can think of gaining in status as a transit hub it needs to ensure its own demands are met, experts say.

“It still needs to facilitate additional gas purchases and encourage new developments such as Shah Deniz Phase II and Kurdistan volumes to meet its own requirements,” says Stephen O’Rourke, a gas supply analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

Although piped gas plays the biggest part in Turkey’s thinking, Ankara has remained open to all options. This month, Mr Yildiz announced that he was in discussions with Qatar over an import terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Another future source of gas could be the Levant Basin, where huge reserves are believed to lie under the deep seabed. But Turkey’s confrontational stance towards Greece and its icy relations with Israel disadvantages Ankara’s position in the Mediterranean, in spite of an exploration agreement with North Cyprus.

If the Levant Basin fulfils its potential and starts yielding large amounts of gas, it could threaten Turkey’s position as a transit hub, analysts predict, as the most direct route to Europe is via Greece. But gas produced there may not be destined to Europe, anyhow.

“We expect LNG to be the most likely export monetisation solution for these discoveries, and consequently Europe is not a guaranteed market for this gas,” says Mr O’Rourke.

Overall, Turkey remains in a strong position to secure the gas necessary for its economic growth and to make it a significant regional hub.

“Turkey should be able to maintain its long-term energy objectives. However, this will become more complicated, given its increasingly complicated relationships with Syria, Iran, Cyprus, and Israel,” says Daniel Wagner, the chief executive of the consultancy Control Risk Solutions.

via Turkey’s big thirst for new power – The National.

January 14, 2013
Turkey-Israel Tensions Set Back Turkish Energy Interests

Tulin Daloglu for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse. posted on January 10.

A general view of Ambarli gas-fired power station, idled in a supply dispute with Ukraine, in Istanbul, Jan. 8, 2009. (photo by REUTERS/Osman Orsal)

Surrounded by 70% of the world’s oil and natural gas reserves, Turkey is almost completely dependent on imports to meet its needs for hydrocarbon energy. Despite this hard reality, Turkey’s Minister of Energy Taner Yildiz said, “We aim to have a Turkey in 2023 that won’t import oil or natural gas,” and, “We will also continue our work turning Turkey into an energy hub.”

As Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse has reported here, and here, the discovery of hydrocarbon reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean basin not only caught the Turkish leadership unprepared, it also revealed the shortsightedness of their approach of designating Israel as an enemy. When Turkey and Israel engaged in dialogue on building an “infrastructure corridor” linking port cities of these two countries, which would have included five separate underwater pipelines for oil, natural gas, electricity, water and communications, they were also seeking to cement a strategic partnership. While anyone who can repair the personal and political rupture between Prime Minister Erdogan and the Israeli leadership will deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, the fact is that the loss of Turkey as a partner isn’t really all that damaging for Israel.

“When we were talking about the infrastructure corridor, it was 2005 and later 2007,” Binyamin Fuad Ben Eli Ezer, former Israeli minister of infrastructure told Al-Monitor. “I tried to find a way to buy gas from Gazprom, Russia, as quick as possible. Today, we don’t need that. The new discoveries in Leviathan and Tamar will be good for us for at least 300 years.”

Leviathan and Tamar are newly discovered huge gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel. Israel certainly has the full sovereignty to explore and exploit these fields. The issue that brings Turkey into the equation is more about the way the natural gas will be brought to surface and carried to international markets for consumption. Ben Eli Ezer, who was the founding father of the idea of the “infrastructure corridor,” also sheds some light on this dilemma.

“Erdogan blessed it. I went with all the maps and the work we’ve done and we found that it is more than possible to do it by these underwater pipelines. It’s an economic one, good one, too,” Ben Eli Ezer said. “If you ask me something happened with Calik. He came to Israel eight or nine times. Both [Ehud] Olmert and [Ariel] Sharon were more than happy about this project from the beginning.”

A giant company with diversified interests from energy to media, Çalik Holding was tasked with preparing a feasibility report by the Erdogan government. Chief Executive Officer Ahmet Çalik is also known as a close friend of Erdogan. “Çalik kept it at ‘wait and see.’ Then the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident happened, and everything blew up,” Ben Eli Ezer said. That still leaves room to speculate as to whether this “infrastructure corridor” between Turkey and Israel that was going to build pipelines under the deep waters of the Mediterranean was really doable. It’s not really the distance that matters, but the engineering that this project requires is certainly a challenging one.

Ben Eli Ezer, however, thinks that if people put their minds to it, the project is still possible and that he would prefer to do it with Turkey and normalize relations with the Ankara government.

“I want to make a statement,” Ben Eli Ezer told Al-Monitor. “The government of Israel, the prime minister of Israel — as far as I know, he’s more than interested to bring back normalization of the relation with Turkey. He’s keen to find the formula that will satisfy both sides.” He then went on to say this: “You see, there is two almost super nations that we have to consider in the Middle East — Turkey and Egypt. We have border with Egypt, which makes it more important for us. But we also don’t need Turkey on the other side.”

Yet the Erdogan-Davutoglu policy is crystal clear on using Israel as a whipping boy at every opportunity. So far, this approach has won them the masses on the Arab street. Erdogan continues to claim that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is the mother of all problems in the region, as if the reason people in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria put their lives on the line to bring down dictators had anything to do with Israel’s unresolved dispute with the Palestinians. Israeli officials have expressed privately many times that under these circumstances, it’s not possible to trust Turkey anymore. “It takes years to build trust, and takes only minutes to dissolve it,” one senior Israeli official told — Although Ben Eli Ezer expressed a desire, despite all these challenges, to rejuvenate the “infrastructure project,” he also said, “But I don’t see how.”

In short, a Turkey in fights with all the countries in the region rich with oil and natural gas reserves only harms its own long-term interests — and undermines the goals that Turkey’s Energy Minister Taner Yildiz has set: “We aim to have a Turkey in 2023 that won’t import oil or natural gas,” and “We also continue our work turning Turkey into an energy hub.”

Tulin Daloglu is a columnist for Al-Monitor and a foreign-policy analyst based in Ankara, Turkey. She tweets @TulinDaloglu.

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2013/01/israel-turkey-tensions-energy.html#ixzz2HfQDvEUG

January 11, 2013
Syria Civil War: U.S. Troops in Turkey Could Be Start Of Intervention

American soldiers are on their way to Turkey to precariously close locations to the Turkish-Syrian border. While the official explanation is that it is for the protection of Turkey (a fellow NATO member) amid Syria’s ongoing civil war, some are skeptical about the claim, and think something more may be occurring — for all the right reasons.

Four hundred U.S. soldiers are being sent to man the anti-missile batteries along the Turkish-Syrian border. Whether it truly is for defensive purposes or for an impending conflict, there are a few issues that should be discussed beforehand.

First and foremost, Turkey itself is an issue. Geopolitically, having Turkey in NATO provides the organization with a strategic foothold in the Middle East. Turkey is also a perennial EU hopeful that for the past 40 years consistently fails to meet EU requirements, and will probably never attain EU membership. Like a good NATO member, Turkey’s government, headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had some very harsh words for the Syrian government and accused President Bashar al-Assad of “attempted genocide.”

The hypocrisy of such an accusation, however, is unknown to some. Turkey, and its predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, had managed to go through with no less than three genocides in the past century. Pontic Greeks, Assyrians, and Armenians were all but virtually wiped out, while the Turkish state adamantly refuses to admit they had any direct involvement. Twenty-one countries have recognized the Armenian massacres as genocide, while the U.S. Government has failed to do so as to not hamper relations with Turkey, despite 43 U.S. states recognizing the genocide. The Kurds also deserve an honorable mention as a group that have been persecuted on-and-off for the past century, while other ethnic and religious minorities such as the Alevis face occasional attacks.

Something like that cannot be overlooked. Assuming there is a genocide occurring (and history shows these assumptions can be wrong, e.g. Kosovo), at what price do we intervene to put a halt to the human rights violations? If those troops in Turkey are just a build-up for something much bigger, then how can we ignore Turkey’s consistent gross human rights record, and use its convenient geographic location as a launchpad into Syria?

Going back to the issue of whether it is to defend Turkey or launch an attack, it is probably the latter. Turkey, being a NATO member, is guaranteed by the NATO charter that any attack on them is an attack on NATO, and consequently all other member states. Whether Turkey would be able to handle it themselves (and they would be), is then irrelevant. However, would Syria even attack Turkey? Other than stray missiles, the chances of Syria attacking Turkey are very low. It would be very strange for a state that is on the brink of collapse, with the central government losing control, to attack a neighboring state.

When looking at the picture as a whole, defending Turkey seems to appear more an excuse to begin an intervention in Syria. Turkey’s involvement in the compassionate “We need to champion human rights” discourse is a mockery to the very principle. The West must also take into account the Vietnam scenario, and the lesser discussed Lebanon civil war that NATO had to pull out of during Reagan’s administration. Let’s not forget, Iran is a player in the Syrian fiasco as well, and it seems that the U.S. is merely buying time until their intervention is a “secure” one.

via Syria Civil War: U.S. Troops in Turkey Could Be Start Of Intervention.

January 11, 2013
NGO Letter to Obama: Concern over Turkey’s Actions

In a letter released today to President Obama, Foreign Policy Initiative, the Project on Middle East Democracy, Freedom House, and Reporters Without Borders expressed their concern over apparent stalled progress and regression in “crucial areas.” The letter draws attention to the deteriorating situation for journalists and members of the press in Turkey, as well as concerns over Kurdish rights, freedom of expression, and the position of women in the government and labor force.

“Hundreds of military officers, as well as various scholars and journalists, have been arrested and charged through trials dogged by allegations of fabricated evidence used by the prosecution,” the letter says. “Turkey, once a leader in the region on the role of women in society, has alarmingly few women in high level government positions and professions, and has seen a steady decline in women’s participation in the labor force,” it adds.

The organizations urge President Obama “to express publicly and privately America’s concerns about Turkey’s backsliding, and to direct diplomatic efforts toward ensuring that Turkey resumes a course designed to consolidate democracy and the rule of law.” Given the tenuous situation in the region due primarily to events in Syria, the U.S.-Turkey relationship “needs to be based on our shared values, not just shared strategic interests,” and “rule of law and political freedoms [must be] a priority in your engagements with Prime Minister Erdogan.”

via NGO Letter to Obama: Concern over Turkey’s Actions | Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

January 11, 2013
Turkey Aims to Buy More LNG

Turkey aims to buy extra 6 Bcm of liquefied natural gas, including some from Qatar, under long-term contracts to meet its growing energy needs, Reuters reported, citing Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz.

He said that the country is already in negotiations with Qatar, but Qatar may not provide all of the additional LNG, therefore Turkey could also buy LNG from the United States if the latter is willing to sell.

The Minister also recently said that his country will discuss building an LNG terminal with Qatar on its Aegean coast.

via Turkey Aims to Buy More LNG>> LNG World News.

January 10, 2013
U.S. troops arrive in Turkey to help protect border with Syria, prompting some skepticism

By Jenna Johnson, Published: January 7

ANTAKYA, Turkey — As U.S. troops arrive in Turkey and prepare to man Patriot antimissile batteries along the Syrian border, some of the people who will be under such protection say that the extra line of defense is not needed and that the presence of foreign forces could pull their country into the war next door.

“We don’t need this thing between us and our neighbors,” said Ali Yilmaz, 49, who works in a cellphone shop in this town, whose population is heavily Alawite, members of the same religious sect as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “It’s wrong. It’s only going to cause problems.”

Other Turks expect the missile-blasting defense system — organized and overseen by NATO after a request from the Turkish government last year — to protect them from projectiles that occasionally stray across the border or from a direct attack. But they question why the same level of protection isn’t being extended to those living inside Syria.

“A lot of children and women are getting killed,” said Mehmet Kamil Dervisoglu, 37, who works at a hotel in Reyhanli, a heavily Sunni town that is closer to the border and has become a “Little Syria” in recent months. “If we got involved, it would be an army against an army. But an army against women and children? What did these women and children do wrong?”

For now, about 400 U.S. troops are being airlifted from Oklahoma to Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. The first wave of troops and supplies arrived Friday, with more scheduled to come in the following days, according to the U.S. European Command.

Eventually, the troops will man two Patriot batteries in Gaziantep, a Turkish town about 30 miles from the border. Germany and the Netherlands also will supply two batteries each, to be stationed in other towns along the border.

The batteries are designed to spot and intercept incoming missiles. Once in place this month, all six will operate under NATO command. The mission is “defensive only” and aims to deter threats to Turkey and de-escalate the fighting along the border, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said last month. It is not known how long the batteries will remain.

‘It’s a strong shield’

For Turks living close to the border, the sounds of war have become part of life. Those living in Hacipasa — a village of about 3,000 people that shares its olive-grove-dotted valley with Syria — frequently hear the heavy whirl of aircraft and whiz of mortar shells and missiles. Sometimes they feel the faint reverberations from the impacts. After heavy attacks, some residents venture to the river along the border to help wounded Syrians escaping to Turkey for medical treatment.

One morning in October, a stray missile landed in a field where villagers had just finished picking cotton, said Abdulaziz Olmez, a grocery shop owner with a bushy mustache who has lived here his whole life.

“We are afraid that they might come closer,” he said. “You might have a pilot who doesn’t know where he’s going or a strong wind.”

Olmez, 46, said he has become more relaxed since hearing that the Patriot batteries were on their way. He said he hopes their presence will result in fewer attacks on Syrian towns just across the river.

“It’s a strong shield,” he said.

Business has dried up since the uprising began nearly 22 months ago, Olmez said, and hundreds of longtime residents were forced to move. They were replaced by hundreds of Syrian refugees in need of shelter, winter clothing and food.

Two Syrian men who moved to Hacipasa two months ago stopped by Olmez’s shop on Saturday afternoon to buy flour and olive oil. The potential danger in Turkey is nothing compared with what Syrians face, they said.

“The Americans, by doing this, they are protecting the Turkish villages,” said one of the men, who did not want to be identified. “But for the Syrian villages, they are doing nothing.”

‘I don’t see a need for it’

Farther from the border, in Antakya, there is widespread criticism of the Patriot batteries. The town has a large Alawite population, and there are frequent rallies in support of the Syrian government. On Sunday afternoon, many residents said they wanted peace and stability in Syria, not a revolution. Some worry that planting foreign troops on the border is a step toward a broader war, and they question why the Turkish military needs help.

“They’re claiming it’s for defense reasons, but I don’t see a need for it,” said Cemil Yuce, 60, at his restaurant. “I don’t think anything will happen, that any missiles will come over from Syria. Nothing will happen.”

Ihsan Birim, who owns a shop that sells CDs, said the economic consequences of the Syrian uprising have hurt Turkey more than stray missiles. His business is half what it was before the revolt began in 2011, he said. Money is tight, especially with two sons in college, and the family eats chicken instead of red meat. Birim, 53, said he wants this to be over.

As for the Patriot batteries, he said: “If it’s for defense purposes, that’s okay. But if it is to attack Syria, we don’t want it. We don’t want war. People are very afraid of war.”

January 8, 2013