TURKEY
PUSHES CROSSROADS POLITICS
By Pepe Escobar via AsiaTimes
While everyone is
concentrated on the possibility of a tectonic shift in US-IRAN relations, and
while a solution may be found for the SYRIAN tragedy in another upcoming set of
negotiations in Geneva, TURKEY is silently toiling in the background. Let's see
what these sultans of swing are up to.
We start on the
internal front. Abdul Mejid I, the 31st Ottoman sultan (in power from 1839 to
1861) always dreamed of a submerged tunnel under the Bosphorus linking EUROPE
to ASIA.
It took
"Sultan" Erdogan, as in Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to make
it happen, when last month he inaugurated – on the 90th anniversary of the
founding of Ataturk's Republic - the US$3 billion, 76-kilometer Marmaray rail
system which, in the hardly hyperbolic words of Mustafa Kara, mayor of
Istanbul's Uskudar district (where the tunnel comes out), will "eventually
link London to Beijing, creating unimagined global connections".
It certainly helps that
this technological marvel fits right into CHINA'S extremely ambitious New Silk
Road(s) strategy which, just like the original Silk Road, starts in XIAN, and
aims to cross to EUROPE via, where else, Istanbul.
Background Information:
CHINA AND TURKEY
CHINESE - TURKISH GEOPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
AMBITIONS COINCIDE
SECURITY DILEMMAS
TURKEY AND CHINA AT ODDS OVER 10 MILLION TURKISH
UYGHUR MINORITIES LIVING IN CHINA
ERDOGAN’S
MEGA-PROJECTS - SUPPORTED BY MILLIONS IN RURAL ANATOLIA
So the fact remains
that "Sultan" Erdogan simply has not been downed by the Gezi Park
protests last June. All the ruling party AKP's mega-projects - supported by
millions in rural Anatolia, ignored for decades by the secular elites in
Istanbul - are alive and kicking.
By 2025, more than a
million commuters will be using the Marmaray. The third Bosphorus bridge, close
to the Black Sea, is being built - despite Alevi fury that it will be named
after Selim The Grim, a sultan who ordered the slaughter of thousands of
Alevis. Same for the new six-runway airport northwest of Istanbul. And then
there's the 50 km "crazy canal" (Erdogan's own definition), linking
the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, so monstrous tanker traffic may be
diverted away from the Bosphorus. The TURKISH green movement insists this could
destroy whole aquatic ecosystems, but Erdogan is unfazed.
THAT
OILY KURDISH FACTOR
In the wider world, TURKISH
foreign policy is now on overdrive. And inevitably, it's all related to energy.
Foreign Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu earlier this month hosted IRANIAN Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in
Ankara. Then he went to Baghdad and met Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Davutoglu also visited
Washington; he wrote an editorial published by Foreign Policy praising the US-TURKISH
"strategic partnership", now facing "an increasingly chaotic
geopolitical environment"; and he made sure to support US-IRAN negotiations.
Background
Information:
KURDISH EQUATION
TURKEY’S DREAMS OF BEING ENERGY HUB STRENGTHENED BY
PKK NEGOTIATIONS?
KURDISH MARCH TOWARD
AUTONOMY GAINS MOMENTUM
TURKEY'S GAMBLE ON
KURDISTAN OIL
TURKEY WILL TAKE MILITARY ACTION IF THE SYRIAN KURDS MAKE MOVES TOWARD
AUTONOMY & TURKEY – SYRIA - WATER DISPUTE (1989)
.jpg)
Recently, Davutoglu
teamed up with Erdogan for a high-level meeting with RUSSIAN President Vladimir
Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in St Petersburg. In due course he'll
be in Tehran.
The question is what
does Ankara want from Washington for so eagerly supporting a US-Iran
normalization?
The key is IRAQI
KURDISTAN. Ankara wants Washington's blessing for the now famously fractious
250,000 barrel-a-day oil pipeline from northern IRAQ, bypassing Baghdad. This
pipeline would add to the perennially troubled Kirkuk-Ceyhan, controlled (sort
of) by Baghdad; currently operating at best at one-fifth of its official
capacity of 1.6 million barrels a day, bombed virtually every week, and with
zero maintenance.
It's not as much about
the oil (which TURKEY badly needs) as a political/economic alliance that
ideally translates into more KURDISH votes for the ruling AKP party in the 2014
TURKISH elections.
The (insurmountable)
problem is the Obama administration has no intention - at the present
negotiation junction - to provoke Tehran by allowing a TURKISH project that
most of all provokes IRAN'S ally Baghdad. That's just another instance that
everything of consequence happening in SOUTHWEST ASIA nowadays involves IRAN.
So it all depends on
how far the US-Iran rapprochement will go - leaving Ankara unable to alienate
Baghdad and Tehran at the same time. Ankara, though, is also aware of huge
potential benefits down the line. That would mean much more oil and gas flowing
from IRAN than the current long-term annual contract for natural gas via the
Tabriz-Ankara pipeline if - and when - Western investment start pumping again
into IRAN'S energy industry.
THAT
WAHHABI-LIKUDNIK AXIS
President Obama gets
along very well with TURKISH Prime Minister Erdogan. But while Obama has
nothing but praise for Erdogan, for the House of SAUD the name
"Obama" is now worse than any plague. And Erdogan is not exactly that
much popular.
Erdogan
enthusiastically supported Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in EGYPT, while the
House of SAUD'S hero is coup plotter General Sisi. In SYRIA, Erdogan once again
supports the Muslim Brotherhood-linked "rebels", while the SAUDIS,
with Bandar Bush ahead of the pack, de facto finance and weaponize all sorts of
nasties including the al-Qaeda offshoot Islamic State of IRAQ and the Levant.
Erdogan has evolved an extremely fractious relationship with ISRAEL, while the
Wahhabi - Likudnik anti-IRAN/SYRIA axis has never been stronger.
It's easy to forget an
Ankara-Damascus-Tehran alliance was in place before the foreign-imposed SYRIAN
civil war. That was part of Davutoglu's "zero problems with our
neighbors" doctrine, then morphed into "all kinds of problems".
The House of SAUD obviously did what it could to undermine the former alliance
with the carrot of more trade and investment in TURKEY. It worked for a while,
when the myth of an "Arab Spring" still held sway, and TURKEY and the
Saudis were even coordinating their support for assorted SYRIAN
"rebels".
Now it's a totally
different configuration. Only in TURKEY we find assorted Islamists,
secularists, the left and assorted liberals all in agreement that the House of SAUD
is a pretty nasty bunch. And not by accident "Sultan Erdogan" - who
allegedly wants the return of the Caliphate - has been derided non-stop all
over pan-Arab media, which for all practical purposes is 90%-controlled by SAUDIS.
SYRIAN
KURDS ARE FIGHTING SAUDI-SUPPORTED JIHADIS
Ankara seems to have
finally realized it must be very careful regarding its SYRIA position. Not very
far from its borders, SYRIAN KURDS are fighting SAUDI-supported jihadis.
Worse; scores of
al-Qaeda-linked jihadis-to-be - a Mujahideen International - are congregating
in a network of safe houses in southern TURKEY, including Antakya, the capital
of Hatay province, before being smuggled over the border to mostly join the
Islamic State of IRAQ and the Levant (ISIL). Predictably, NATO is not amused.
IT'S
ALL ABOUT PIPELINEISTAN
TURKEY'S number one
foreign policy aim is to position itself as a critical energy crossroads for
any oil and natural gas coming from RUSSIA, the CASPIAN, CENTRAL ASIA and even
the MIDDLE EAST to EUROPE.
Yet TURKEY has been
squeezed by two conflicting Pipelineistan narratives. One is the never-ending
soap opera Nabucco, which basically means delivering natural gas to EUROPE from
just about anywhere (AZERBAIJAN, TURKMENISTAN, IRAN, IRAQ, even EGYPT) except RUSSIA.
And the other is the South Stream pipeline, proposed by RUSSIA and crossing the
Black Sea.
Background
Information:
AZERBAIJAN AND
THE TRANS - ADRIATIC ENERGY PROJECT
DON'T FORGET
"PIPELINEISTAN"
STRENGTHENING
TIES IN THE CAUCASUS
Insisting in its role
as a neutral bridge between East and West, Ankara hedged its bets. But after
the EUROPEAN financial crisis took over, Nabucco was, for all practical
purposes, doomed. What's left now is the so-called Nabucco West - a shorter,
1,300 km pipeline from TURKEY to CENTRAL EUROPE - and the much cheaper
Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), just 500 km from TURKEY across the BALKANS to ITALY.
The consortium
(including BP, Total and AZERBAIJAN'S SOCAR) developing the huge Shah Deniz II
field in AZERBAIJAN ended up choosing TAP. So Nabucco is now virtually six feet
under.
To say that's been a
nifty deal for Moscow is a huge understatement. TAP does not threaten Gazprom's
hold on the EUROPEAN market. And besides, Moscow got closer to Baku. Dick
Cheney must adjust his pacemaker for another heart attack; after all his
elaborate energy plans, Moscow and Baku are nothing less than discussing
transporting RUSSIAN oil through the notorious Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC)
pipeline, which Dr Zbig Brzezinski dreamed up to exactly bypass RUSSIA. On top
of it, they are also bound to reverse the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline to pump RUSSIAN
oil into AZERBAIJAN.
TURKEY
AND ITS EAST-WEST ENERGY TRANSIT CORRIDOR
Additionally, that's
the end of TURKISH (and EUROPEAN) pipe dreams of having wacky "gas
republic" TURKMENISTAN supplying energy across the CASPIAN through the CAUCASUS
and TURKEY to EUROPE. For Moscow, this is non-negotiable; we control the
transit of CENTRAL ASIAN energy to EUROPE. Moreover, TURKMENISTAN already has
better sturgeon to fry - via its ultra-profitable gas pipeline to CHINA.
The bottom line: RUSSIA
getting even more ascendant in the CAUCASUS equals TURKEY - which imports
nearly all of its oil, coal and natural gas - becoming even more energy
dependent on RUSSIA. RUSSIA supplies nearly 60% of TURKEY'S natural gas - and
rising. IRAN supplies 20%. Moscow is sure TURKEY will soon overtake GERMANY as
its biggest energy client.
That's certainly what
Erdogan was discussing in detail this past Wednesday in Moscow. And then there
is TURKEY'S ambitious plan to build 23 nuclear power plants by 2023. Guess
who's ahead? Moscow, of course. Not only as builder but also as primary
supplier of nuclear fuel. No package of Western sanctions seems to be on the
horizon.
So Ankara seems to be
(silently) hectic on all fronts. Erdogan is carefully cultivating his friend
Obama - positioning himself as a privileged sort of messenger. Erdogan supports
Iran's civilian nuclear program - which instantaneously placed him as highly
suspicious in the eyes of the Wahhabi-Likudnik axis of fear and loathing.
That's the key reason for the widening estrangement between Ankara and Riyadh.
Ankara's desire to be a
key actor in an eventual US-IRAN rapprochement springs out of a simple
calculation. Faced with tremendous political, economic and security barriers, TURKEY
may only fulfill its wish of becoming the privileged EAST-WEST energy transit
corridor with IRAN by its side.
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