MEDVEDEV’S CHARM OFFENSIVE IN TURKEY
By Robert Amsterdam
Eurasia Review
evs-charm-offensive-in-turkey.html
May 13 2010
As President Dmitry Medvedev departed for a state visit to Turkey
this week, there wasn’t much debate over whether or not it would
be success, but rather what kind of deals would be offered up to
get the handshakes – would it be weapons, cheap gas, a pipeline,
a Gazprom investment, or the granddaddy of them all, nuclear energy?
Well Turkey is no old maid (sorry, Ukraine), and has many good reasons
to call for a high dowry: NATO membership, the largest standing army in
Europe, and a booming, modern economy which is closely narrowing the
gap with Europe. Most importantly, the country occupies an incredibly
important geostrategic position between Europe and the energy basin
of Central Asia as well as control over the Bosporus Strait, and will
continue to play a key role in the transit of oil and gas.
So it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise that during Medvedev’s
visit Russia signed a $20 billion deal to built Turkey’s first nuclear
power plant, and another 20 deals and agreements. In this particular
situation, Sergei Kiriyenko and Rosatom played the role usually left
to Igor Sechin, and carried out the now familiar process of layered
bargaining (very few countries in the world can come to one meeting
with arms deals, nuclear energy, and 5 or 6 industrial oligarchs in
tote to jump in on the deal).
But as usual, behind the deals, some problems in the relationship
remain. Turkey and Russia have had a historically rocky relationship
dating back to Ottoman support for the Crimean Khanate (who burned
down Moscow in 1571), while the Tsarist empire repeatedly clashed
with the Turks over the 18th and 19th century and supported Christian
separatists. During the Cold War, fears of Russian intervention in
Turkey drove them into the arms of NATO, while trade politics over
the Black Sea have also come into play. The tensions between historic
rivals continues to today with a very large population of Chechens,
which some Russian hawks believe is a safe haven for terrorists.
Ankara sees itself as an influential regional leader on the Black Sea,
and their conduct following the war in Georgia displayed a distaste
of Russia’s failure to consult before combat operations. There is of
course also Russia’s role in supporting Armenia as a client state, as
well as other regional problems, such as the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute
and Turkey’s interests in Azerbaijan. Energy, however, really seems to
the be trickiest issue of all, and with Russia supplying some 2/3rds of
Turkey’s natural gas, the government is looking to play both sides of
the fence, and above all, maintain strict control over transit points.
Despite some of these tensions, the high stakes involved in Russia’s
effort to monopolize the flow of energy supplies from east to west
(and block the Nabucco pipeline) has led to a hasty and sometimes
expensive rapprochement with Turkey. Medvedev’s visit builds upon the
evident momentum from Vladimir Putin’s 2009 visit, which used energy
trade and investment as the key vehicle to deepen relations.
Before arriving, Medvedev published an op/ed in Today’s Zaman on his
vision for the strategic alliance:
Certainly cooperation in the field of energy comprises the main axis
of our cooperation. We have critical joint projects that are of top
priority in this field. These are the South Stream and Blue Stream-2
natural gas pipelines, the construction of the Samsun-Ceyhan oil
pipeline and a nuclear power plant to be built by Russia on Turkish
soil. I am confident that implementing these projects will be concrete
evidence that relations have moved up to a high-quality new level
and significantly contribute to consolidating international energy
security.
Upon completing the series of deals signed this week, the Russian
President was ebullient: "Our talks today showed that Turkey and Russia
are strategic partners not only in words but in deeds. (…) It really
looks rather impressive." It might not be enough to overcome the deep
problems in the relationship, as well as the collision of national
interests in Turkish and Russian competition in energy transit,
but they are certainly getting close.
Once again, we are witnessing a complete lack of awareness or at least
a policy failure on behalf of Europe and the United States to offer
competing deals to Ankara and keep relations close, and a failure to
recognize the importance of this critical ally. Turkey’s cooperation
with Russia is certainly no doomsday scenario, and, like any other
country, they will structure their relations with Moscow as they see
fit … but if Europe somehow thinks that this won’t impact their
energy security in the long term, they had better get their heads
out of the sand.
Robert Amsterdam is an international lawyer and founding partner
of the law firm Amsterdam & Peroff. This article originally (here)
appeared at the Robert Amsterdam: Perspectives on Global Politics
and Business website.