Baku, Azerbaijan, June 20
By Rufiz Hafizoglu – Trend:
It seems that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent letter to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the occasion of the Russia Day hasn’t had the desired effect in terms of normalizing the relations between Ankara and Moscow.
For instance, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said earlier, “We still do not see any progress in [Turkey’s] response to the conditions repeatedly set by Russia, under which it would be possible to talk about some initial preconditions for normalizing the relations with Turkey.”
Moscow insists that the relations between two countries can be normalized only after Turkey apologizes and pays compensation for the downed Russian Su-24 bomber.
Ankara has a differing opinion about Erdogan’s letter to Putin.
Ankara thinks the country’s authorities knew that the letter will not be regarded by Russia as Turkey’s first action towards normalizing the relations. However, this doesn’t mean that Ankara has no intention to normalize its relations with Moscow at all.
And almost all the recent statements by Turkish authorities prove that there is indeed such an intention.
Besides, recently, Turkish media outlets, citing the diplomatic sources, reported that Ankara is working on a road map meant for normalizing the relations with Russia.
The relations between Russia and Turkey have always been built on mutual economic and energy interests, and obviously it will continue this way.
This means that even if Turkey doesn’t fulfill all the three conditions put forward by Russia, Ankara still has chances to normalize the relations with Moscow.
One of those chances is the Turkish Stream – a project that Russia was trying to impose on Ankara in December 2014.
After the crisis erupted in relations between Moscow and Ankara in November 2015, everyone believed it was Russia that froze the Turkish Stream project. However, Erdogan made a statement saying it was Turkey, not Russia, which froze the project.
Given that Turkey can anytime decide to unfreeze the project, it can be said the Turkish Stream for now remains as a “wild card” in Ankara’s hands.
Turkish Stream doesn’t even harm the interests of Ankara. With Turkish Stream, Turkey was aiming, in the first place, to create a joint gas consortium, and thus, achieve partial control over Russian gas.
And this wasn’t in Russia’s interests.
All those issues related to Russia’s demanding that Turkey pay compensation and apologize for the Su-24 incident will find their solutions along with Ankara’s unfreezing the Turkish Stream and refusing to control the Russian gas on its soil.
But in that case, Ankara, if the project is implemented, will get the money only for the transit of Russian gas through its territory.
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Rufiz Hafizoglu is the head of Trend Agency's Arabic news service, follow him on Twitter: @rhafizoglu