Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Poutine inaugurate in Turkey, Wednesday, January 8, a gas pipeline illustrating their rapprochement. But the ceremony risks being overshadowed by the volatile situation in Libya and Syria, where their interests diverge.
The two leaders will symbolically open in Istanbul the valves of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, also called TurkStream, intended to supply Turkey and southern Europe with Russian gas via the Black Sea, bypassing Ukraine, unstable and hostile to Moscow. This ceremony, which will start around 12 noon GMT, illustrates the spectacular rapprochement between these two countries after a diplomatic crisis in 2015. But it comes at the height of tensions in Syria and Libya, where Moscow and Ankara face each other.
Syria, another hot issue
Turkey began deploying troops to Libya this week to support the Tripoli government against a powerful rival, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. Even if Moscow denies, Erdogan says that "2,500 mercenaries of the Wagner group", a private Russian military company, are fighting alongside Haftar’s forces, also supported by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
If a clash between Turkish and Russian forces can set fire to the powder, the two leaders have every interest in agreeing to "Share the Libyan burden", says Mariana Belenkaïa, of the Carnegie Center in Moscow. Turkey called on Tuesday "Upon the immediate cessation of hostilities" and summoned Haftar's forces to return to the positions they occupied before the launch of their offensive against Tripoli.
The other hot file is Syria, where MM. Erdogan and Putin have established themselves as the masters of the game. The Syrian regime supported by Moscow has multiplied in recent weeks the deadly bombings on Idleb (northwest), the last rebel stronghold, some of which are supported by Ankara, causing an influx of displaced to Turkey. Ankara on Tuesday called on Russia to "Stop the attacks of the regime" and demanded respect for a truce concluded last August.
Putin arrived in Istanbul Tuesday evening from Damascus where he paid a surprise visit, his first since the conflict began in 2011, and met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "The Russian conditions are very simple: Turkey must do more to eliminate the terrorist cells in Idleb. The discussions are going to be around this idea ", anticipates Iouri Barmine, Middle East and North Africa director at the Moscow Policy Group.
Energy interdependence
Turkey and Russia experienced a serious crisis in 2015 after Ankara shot down a plane from Moscow on the Syrian-Turkish border. But the two countries overcame this crisis in 2016 and are now cooperating in the energy sector, with the construction by Russia of the first nuclear power plant in Turkey, as well as in the armaments sector, with the purchase by Russian defense systems Ankara S-400.
This agreement is notably "Due to the good personal relationships between Putin and Erdogan", underlines Jana Jabbour, specialist in Turkish diplomacy at Sciences Po Paris, "But also the fact that they are economically and energy interdependent". This interdependence should be reinforced with the entry into service of TurkStream, whose construction started in 2017. With this new gas pipeline, Turkey secures the supply of its large energy-consuming cities in the west and establishes itself a little more like a major energy hub. For Russia, it is a question of feeding Europe by bypassing Ukraine.
The pipeline consists of two parallel pipes, over 900 km long, which connect Anapa, in Russia, to Kiyiköy, in Turkey (north-west). In total, these pipes will be able to transport some 31.5 billion cubic meters of gas pumped to Russia each year. TurkStream already started last week to supply Bulgaria, bordering Turkey, and is being extended to Serbia and Hungary. Officials from the three countries are also expected to attend the inauguration on Wednesday, according to Turkish media.
