Turkey-Russia pipeline plan sign of diplomatic shift

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin voiced their support for resurrecting a major gas pipeline project at an energy summit in Istanbul on Monday. The pledges are a sign Ankara and Moscow are improving relations, but remaining divergences show they are not heading for a strategic partnership.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan at the World Energy Congress in Istanbul, Turkey, October 10, 2016. Sputnik/Kremlin/Alexei Druzhinin via Reuters

If completed, the Turkish Stream pipeline, known as TurkStream, would pump 31.5 billion cubic metres of Russian gas per year into Europe.

At present most Russian gas reaches Europe through Ukraine and TurkStream would realise Moscow’s ambitions of establishing another route.

“That means less transit fees for Ukraine and far less gas going through that region,” says Christopher Haines, head of oil and gas at BMI Research in London.

“If this route is completed, you’ve got Russian gas going into [south-eastern] Europe. So there’s the possibility for them to start encroaching on smaller markets in that region as well.”

Putin, Erdogan seek realignment

Efforts of Moscow and Ankara to rebuild their ties are key to the project, which was all but scrapped when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane over Syria last November.

With their talks in Istanbul, Putin and Erdogan have met for the third time since August and it is clear that both leaders are looking to realign their interests.

“Erdogan only belatedly recognised last year, with the crisis in Russian-Turkish relations, that 65 percent of Turkey’s gas imports come from Russia, and there hasn’t been a strong determination to diversify itself,” says Andrew Neff, principal analyst with IHS Energy.

“With the warming relationship, we don’t really see that energy security concern being exhibited by the Turks.”

Even if the project goes ahead, it is still in its initial stages.

Differences over Syria

Russia is lifting its economic sanctions on Turkey, but the two countries still have many disagreements, not least when it comes to the conflict in Syria, where Moscow is actively backing forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, whom Turkey wants to see leave power.

“The same point of confrontation between Russia and Turkey over Syria policy still exists,” Neff says. “It’s been pushed to the backburner here, after coming to the forefront with the warplane being shot down November. They’re papering over the differences at the moment, but they still exist and they’re still important and it’s still a point of contention between the two countries.”

However, the pledges in support of the TurkStream project are a sign the two countries are looking for a pragmatic approach to working together, despite their differences.

“It’s a very rational rapprochement, identifying very specific fields of interest with regards to economic and political issues, and energy is one of them,” says Velina Tchakarova, a research fellow covering the Black Sea area with the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy in Vienna.

“It identifies fields where both can cooperate but they still respect for each other when it comes to competing on other issues, which means they still have many issues on which they disagree,” Tchakarova explains. “They have very different positions when it comes to the Syrian regime and when it comes to the Syrian Kurds, and it will basically remain that way.”