By Aaron Mulvihill
Special to Russia Profile
July 6, 2009
As Europe and Russia Manoeuvre for Control of Energy Routes Across the Caucasus and the Black Sea, Turkey Has Emerged as a Key Broker
As the jet carrying Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Energy Minister Taner Yildiz took off from Moscow after a meeting with their Russian counterparts, reports were already circulating about the conclusion of a deal on the Nabucco gas pipeline, which is to pump gas from the Caspian Sea into Europe, bypassing Russia. A coincidence? Or a sign, perhaps, that the meetings could have gone a little better for the Kremlin?
The dossiers on energy and foreign relations are never far apart when Russian and Turkish delegations meet. The foreign minister was officially visiting to discuss relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the energy minister was to negotiate the building of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant – but the Nabucco pipeline is central to both issues, and it is unlikely to have been left off the agenda.
The planned 3,300km Nabucco pipeline, which is to pump natural gas from the Caspian Sea into Europe as far as Austria, is designed to reduce European dependence on Russian energy. The final agreement on the construction of the $7.9 billion conduit is to be signed on 13 July in Ankara, it was revealed last Friday.
Determined to maintain what the media has termed its “energy weapon,” Russia put forward a rival project: South Stream, which would pump Russian gas through the Black Sea to Bulgaria and beyond, also as far as Austria. Turkish representatives earlier in the year hinted that the country would put its full support behind Nabucco only if given guarantees on EU accession. The plausible alternative of South Stream, then, allowed both Russia and Turkey to exert leverage on Europe: Turkey could hold out for an EU quid-pro-quo, while Russia had time to put obstacles in Nabucco’s path, such as buying up its intended sources of gas. Turkey was last week formally invited to take part in the South Stream project, but it was not announced what form this might take, as the pipeline does not pass through Turkish land in its current draft form.
It is unclear whether, by dragging its heels, Turkey has secured any EU promises (11 of 35 negotiation “chapters” are now open, but the one on energy, significantly, remains blocked), but it certainly has not damaged relations with the Kremlin.
Since then-President Vladimir Putin’s landmark visit to Ankara in 2004 – the first by a Russian head of state – trade turnover has multiplied, reaching a total volume of $38 billion dollars in 2008, and with increasing frequency observers began referring to a “special relationship” between the two countries. Turkish President Abdullah Gul paid a state visit to Moscow as recently as February 2009.
Is the Turkey-Russia “equal partnership” more equal than others, as officia1 announcements from both sides would have observers believe? Or do Russia and Turkey regard each other as equally-matched rivals in a shared exclusion from Europe, as did the Russian and Ottoman Empires?
Sinan Ogan, the chairman of the Turkish Centre for International Relations and Strategic Analysis, argues that Russo-Turkish relations exhibit a special character. “Our economic structures complement each other and few countries in the world economy have such a feature. The other interesting thing in this relation is that both cooperation and competition exist at the same time within these relations, especially in the field of energy,” said Ogan.
Energy
The construction of Nabucco will not only mean that Europe becomes less reliant on Russian imports – the same applies to Turkey itself. Russia currently supplies Turkey with the bulk of its gas imports. In 2007, Russia overtook Iran to become Turkey’s top oil supplier as well. Turkey has few hydrocarbon resources of its own, yet its domestic demand for energy has risen sharply in recent years. Ankara’s latest answer to energy security is a balanced one: it has demanded that a percentage of the Nabucco capacity be made available for domestic distribution, and even possible re-sale, while at the same time is enlisting Russian help in constructing the republic’s first nuclear plant. Neither plan has yet been officially confirmed.
Turkey’s role as an energy hub makes it politically perilous to accept overtures from one neighbour over another. Ankara’s balancing act is complicated by its simultaneous membership of several, sometimes conflicting, groups.
Turkey’s NATO allies frown upon its purchase of Russian military hardware, while conscious that the secular Muslim democracy and leading member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference is a vital partner in Afghanistan and in the fight against Islamic extremism. Russia and Turkey found themselves on the same side in vocal opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Turkey reversed years of close cooperation with the United States by refusing to cooperate in the offensive. But in August 2008, Turkey aggravated the Kremlin by allowing U.S. warships to pass through the Bosporus en route to Georgia, which was then struggling to regain control over the Russian-backed breakaway province of South Ossetia.
NATO and Russia cut off ties as a result of the Georgia crisis, and formal co-operation resumed only in late June 2009. The continuing thaw, and possible resumption of military cooperation, is heavily dependent on internal lobbying from Turkey, though it has not prevented Russia from expressing its irritation by erecting barriers to trade.
Trade
In an almost immediate retaliation for the Georgian incident, in September 2008 Russia turned away convoys of Turkish trucks at its border, claiming the Turkish produce was of poor quality. According to Sinan Ogan, Turkish exporters are still facing problems with customs officials, despite the fact that “measurements made by Turkish official institutions have proved that there is nothing harmful in these products.” Turkish convoys, he added, are singled out for lengthier checks, and “Turkish trucks have to wait for days and sometimes for weeks [before clearing customs].”
In trade, as well as energy, Russia holds the trump cards. Turkey’s trade deficit against Russia reached a colossal $18 billion in 2008, giving its northern neighbour significant economic leverage. The three million Russians who holiday in Turkey annually are perhaps the most visible indicator of this booming trade. Turkish companies are key players in the Russian construction market – Terminal 3 of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, due to open shortly, is only the most prominent example of Turkish firms’ appetite for major Russian government tenders.
But Moscow’s continuing dominance in trade is not assured. Its main exports to Turkey are in the volatile sectors of energy and tourism, while it imports durable goods and foodstuffs from Turkey, the demand for which is more stable in the long term even if it has recently fallen. Analysts and rating agencies such as Fitch and Barclays Capital have tipped Turkey as the first country in the “emerging Europe” region, which includes Russia, to buck the economic downturn with strong growth in 2010. They point to its large domestic consumer base and robust banking system.
Security
The need for close cooperation between Ankara and Moscow, if not a “special relationship,” is vividly apparent in the sphere of national security. Chechen terrorist cells are thought to be still active in Turkey, and the armed wing of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) is known to use Russian territory as a safe haven. It has almost become a ritual to accompany each official state visit with a raid on the respective terrorist group’s hideout and a joint declaration of cooperation in the fight against terror. But Moscow has so far declined to add the PKK to its official list of terrorist organisations, despite token pledges of support.
Tangible security cooperation on a larger scale in the Caucasus region is fraught with complexity. Turkey and Russia de facto support opposite sides in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which flared up between Armenia and Azerbaijan when they achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Armenia is Russia’s lone ally in the region, and the republic enjoys generous military support from Moscow. Azerbaijan, whose citizens consider themselves Turkish, rather than Turkic, is the source of much of the crude oil flowing through Turkey, carried by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
After a long and bloody stalemate, both Russia and Turkey have begun to promote the OSCE Minsk Group peace process. Pipeline politics certainly have their part to play. The Georgian crisis demonstrated how violence in the Caucasus can play havoc with energy distribution, and consequently Turkey is anxious to normalise its strained relations with Armenia. In its turn, Russia’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom signed a deal with its Azeri counterpart in June 2009 to import 500 million cubic metres of gas in 2010 for eventual resale in Europe.
Caucasus battleground
Backers of the Nabucco pipeline are anxious that, with Russia snapping up large chunks of Caspian gas production, they will struggle to fill the pipeline when it opens in 2014. As far as energy competition is concerned, the Caucasus and Black Sea region has become as significant a battleground as it ever was during the rivalry of the Russian and Ottoman Empires.
Accordingly, the historical logic of Turkey and Russia as “equals apart from Europe” is perhaps as useful now as it was during the 16th century.
