Security for gas and oil took Turkey to Russia and Iran! -Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal
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Turkey, a functioning democracy, a strong US ally and NATO’s only Muslimmajority member, was often presented as a model for the ’autocratic’ Arab Middle East by the USA. Following the Arab Spring, Erdogan’s relationship with NATO underwent a remarkable change. While retaining its NATO membership, Turkey has become part of the Russia-led triad engaged in peacemaking in the Syrian civil war outside the purview of the UN. To the alarm of its NATO partners, Turkey decided to purchase Russian S-400 missiles. In addition, it is central to the TurkStream pipeline project that will carry Russian gas through Turkey to southern European destinations. US-Isreali joint maneuverings have brought Turkey together with Russia and Iran. Iran and Russia are strategic allies. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the two neighboring nations have generally enjoyed very close cordial relations. Reckless economic sanctions on bot Iran and Russia in fact cemented their ties in a big way. Due to Western economic sanctions on Iran, Russia has become a key trading partner, especially in regard to the former's excess oil reserves. Militarily, Iran is the only country in Western Asia that has been invited to join the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Russia's own international treaty organization in response to NATO, while much of the Iranian military consists of Russian weaponry. Iran has its embassy in Moscow and consulates in the city of Kazan. Russia has its embassy in Tehran, and consulates in Rasht and Isfahan. In 2005, Russia was the seventh largest trading partner of Iran, with 5.33% of all exports to Iran originating from Russia. Trade relations between the two increased from US$1 billion in 2005 to $3.7 billion in 2008. Motor vehicles, fruits, vegetables, glass, textiles, plastics, chemicals, hand-woven
carpet, stone and plaster products were among the main Iranian non-oil goods exported to Russia. Iran and Russia have made progress towards an oil for goods deal sources said would be worth up to $20 billion. As Iran and Russia economic and geo-political relations have soured over the years, Russia and the EUU have opted for Iran to join the Eurasian Economic Union as well. Currently, only one EEU country, Armenia, has direct land borders with Iran. Iran currently remains a key partner of the Eurasian Economic Union. In May 2015, the Union gave the initial go-ahead to signing a free trade agreement with Iran which is now an important partner in strengthening the economic stability of the region
April 2017 Russia and Iran have warned the US they will “respond with force” if their own “red lines” are crossed in Syria. Following Friday’s cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase, in retaliation for the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun earlier in the week, the alliance supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a joint statement threatening action in response to “any breach of red lines from whoever it is”. “What America waged in an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines. From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well,” the group’s joint command centre said. US President Donald Trump said the strike on al Shayrat airbase, near Homs, with some 60 Tomahawk missiles was “representing the world”. The base was allegedly used by Syrian forces to conduct the attack, which killed more than 70 people. Relations between Russia and Iran have increased as both countries are under U.S. sanctions and are seeking new trade partners. The two countries signed a historic US$20 billion energy deal in 2014 On Sunday the UK’s Defence Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, demanded Russia rein in Assad, claiming that Moscow is “responsible for every civilian death” in Khan Sheikhoun. Sir Michael said the attack had happened “on their watch” and that Vladimir Putin must now live up to previous promises that Mr Assad’s chemical weapons had been destroyed. Experts have dismissed Russia’s claim that a rebel chemical weapons facility caused the deaths.
Britain, the US and France accused Assad’s regime of gassing civilians in the opposition-held town, but Damascus claimed it destroyed its toxic stockpiles following an international agreement struck in 2013. The Russian defence ministry put out a competing version of events claiming legitimate Syrian air strikes against “terrorists” had struck a warehouse used to produce and store shells containing toxic gas, which were allegedly being sent to Iraq. The joint command centre also said on Sunday the missile strike would not deter it from “liberating” Syria, and that the US military presence in the north of the country amounted to an illegal “occupation”. Putin and Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani have called for an objective investigation into the chemical attack. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Sunday that Moscow had failed to carry out the 2013 agreement to secure and destroy chemical weapons in Syria. The failure related to the recent strike and the recent terrible chemical weapons attack in large measure is a failure on Russia’s part to achieve its commitment to the international community. Tillerson is expected in Moscow in the coming days for talks with Russian officials. He stopped short of accusing Russia of being directly involved in the planning or execution of the attack.But he said the US expected Russia to take a tougher stance against Syria by rethinking its alliance with Assad because “every time one of these horrific attacks occurs, it draws Russia closer into some level of responsibility.” Russia-Saudi rapprochement? Any possible rapprochement with Saudi Arabia cannot be at the cost of Russo-Iranian ties as Moscow cannot risk losing its close ties with Tehran. However, a number of developments in recent months have signaled a possible rapprochement between Russia and Saudi Arabia. One, the two countries have made a joint effort to push for further cutting of oil production to help bring up prices. Since the beginning of 2017, Russian Minister of Energy Alexander Novak and his Saudi counterpart Khalid al-Falih have been seeking to conclude an agreement on reducing output. While in Moscow, the latter said that "relations between Saudi Arabia and Russia are going through one of their best moments ever". Later, Moscow and Riyadh signed a preliminary military cooperation agreement worth $3.5bn. The Saudis have requested transfer of technology. In recent months, the two countries have also made significant progress on Syria. Under the patronage
of Riyadh, Egypt provided a platform for negotiations between Moscow and the Syrian opposition.
Russia is extremely interested in concluding an agreement on de-escalation zones, the implementation of which is not possible exclusively within the framework of the tripartite initiative of Russia, Iran and Turkey, without the involvement of other actors. From this perspective, the role Saudi Arabia played in the signing of the two Cairo agreements between Russia and the Syrian opposition on East Ghouta and Rastan is very important. Closer Russian-Saudi relations were seen as a positive step in Tel Aviv, Russia's "silent partner" in the Middle East. In recent years, Israel itself has enjoyed closer ties with Riyadh and its ally Abu Dhabi. Iran uses the Yemeni conflict to draw the kingdom into a long-running and extremely costly war. Russia, which for many years has been seeking to strengthen and develop its relations with Saudi Arabia, is much less interested in violating the status quo on the Arabian Peninsula. Russia has pursued pragmatic policies, independent of Iran, including drawing closer to Saudi Arabia, but there is a limit to how far it can go. Any moves that might be perceived in Tehran as open disregard for its national interests or the formation of a Russian-Saudi alliance will have serious consequences on Russian-Iranian relations. Russia and Iran have a number of common interests in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, in Eurasian transit routes, the situation in Transcaucasia and Central Asia as well as in oil and gas markets. Any deterioration in Russian-Iranian relations would most definitely hurt Russian interests in Central Asia and Arab countries under strong Iranian influence. Russia would also risk losing joint projects with Iran in the oil and gas sphere. Hence Moscow would not go all out for ties with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is eager to disrupt Russo-Iranian (Syrian) nexus. Iran and Russia also have divergent interests in Syria. Russia is largely driven by its security and arms trade concerns and confrontation with the West, while Iran is pursuing to establish a regional foothold through dangerous sectarian policies. The military coordination between the two countries in Syria has also been patchy and their coordination is occasional. Moreover, on a number of occasions, Iran undermined Russian attempts to
establish a ceasefire in Syria by provoking further local bloodshed. Since the beginning of the new rapprochement in 2013, Moscow and Tehran have been steadily failing to boost the development of trade and investment cooperation. Russian and Iranian interests have also directly clashed over territorial ownership of the Caspian Sea and its legal status. Moscow silently acknowledged and backed Iran's interests in Yemen. In 2015, Sergey Lavrov warned that Russia would not allow the conflict in Yemen to escalate into a war against Iran. Moscow and Teheran have a long history of geographic, economic, and socio-political interaction. Since then, mutual relations have often been turbulent and dormant at other times. Currently Russia acts as both an economic partner and a military benefactor to Iran, a country under severe sanctions by much of the Western world Past and present contact between Russia and Iran has long been complicatedly multi-faceted; often wavering between collaboration and rivalry.
---Turkey became on spotlight in international news first when its aidship Marmora going to Gaza Strip to help the besieged Palestinians breach and break the Israeli blockades and then when anti-Islamic forces sponsored by the western powers including Israel stormed Turkey for a coup to destabilize the former Ottoman Empire and kill its president Erdogan, destroying the ruling Islamist party’s image. The coup failed and plotters were arrested. Islamist party and government has been saved. In fact, the aborted military coup in Turkey in July 2016 was a defining moment in the republic’s foreign policy. As the first foreign leader to congratulate Erdogan for crushing the coup, Russian President Vladimir Putin won the Turkish leader’s heartfelt gratitude. Iran’s Foreign Minister
Muhammad Javad Zarif had sent a message even earlier, during the initial moves by the rebellious general: “Stability and democracy in Turkey are paramount.” In a follow-up telephone conversation with Erdogan, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani told him that the coup attempt was “a test to identify your domestic and foreign friends and enemies.” Turkey could identify its real friends and true foes. With a population of nearly 80 million with steadily rising living conditions, Turkey has urgent need of a dependable supply of natural gas. Aside from lignite coal, Turkey has no hydrocarbon deposits. Its main sources of gas are Russia and Iran, contributing respectively 60% and 30% of the total, with the rest coming from Azerbaijan. There is a direct correlatonship between living standards and energy consumption. Because natural gas is mostly used for cooking in Turkey, its annual consumption reflects living standards Russia’s state-owned Gazprom had become a supplier to several European nations pumped through a pipeline laid across Ukraine. To reduce its almost total dependence on Ukraine for its gas exports, Moscow came up with a plan – South Stream – to transport gas to other parts of Europe. This project advanced until the Kremlin’s capture of the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine in February 2014, when the European Union imposed economic sanctions on Russia. This turn of event opened the door to Russo-Turkish economic cooperation. In December, Putin cancelled the South Stream project, replacing it with the $13.74 billion TurkStream gas pipeline that by 2020 will carry Russian gas to
southern Europe via Bulgaria. This involved laying a pipeline under the Black Sea to emerge in Western Turkey 900 kilometers southwest to carry 15.75 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe annually. A twin pipeline was planned to deliver gas sold to Turkey. A spat between Moscow and Ankara – when Turkey shot down a Russian jet fighter in its airspace near the Syrian border in November 2015 – did not disrupt the massive project. Russia limited its response to curtailing trade with Turkey. The following June, Turkey apologized for downing a Russian warplane which had inadvertently strayed into its airspace. Soon after receiving a congratulatory call from Putin after the abortive July coup, Erdogan flew to St Petersburg and publicly thanked his Russian counterpart. In response, Putin relaxed trade restrictions. Syria Erdogan, who had earlier joined efforts to depose Assad, also moderated his opposition to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Instead, he focused on blocking the creation of a Kurdish enclave, planned by the Washingtonbacked Kurdish militia operating as the Syrian Democratic Forces along the Turkish border. That gave Putin an opening to co-opt Turkey with the aim of ending the Syrian civil war. After hosting a meeting with Erdogan and Rouhani in Sochi on November 22, Putin said, “The militants in Syria have sustained a decisive blow and now there is a realistic chance to end the multi-year civil war.” He had conferred with Assad two days earlier. Notably on November 12, Turkey announced
signing a contract for the purchase of Russian S-400 missiles, ignoring the disapproval of other NATO members, particularly the United States. In mid-December Putin and Erdogan suggested the Kazakh capital of Astana as a venue for conducting peace talks for Syria. On December 20, Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif joined them at Astana. Reversing past policies, Iran and Turkey found themselves on the same side in the Syrian crisis. Turkey had been among the first countries to recognise Islamic Republic of Iran. Still its “Neither East nor West” foreign policy in the 1980s led to cool relations between the two neighbors. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s disintegration in 1991, five Muslim-majority Soviet republics – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – tried to find a new identity. Washington urged them to emulate the Turkish model of secular democracy with a multi-party system and shun Iran’s Islamist model. This advice held until June 1996 when Necmettin Erbakan, leader of the Islamic Welfare Party, became Turkish prime minister. Two months later he defied Washington’s 1996 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act by signing a $23 billion gas deal during his visit to Tehran. Turkey was to start importing Iranian gas by 1999 and continue doing so for the next 20 years in increased volumes. Though the Turkish military forced Erbakan to resign in 1997, this deal remained intact. With the electoral victory of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party – Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP, a moderate successor of the Welfare Party – in November 2002, diplomatic relations between the two neighbours improved. In 2009, Ankara invested up to $4 billion in phases 6 and 7 of Iran’s South
Pars gas field with reserves of 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, or 8% of the global total. There have been periodic disagreements. When Turkey hosted the establishment of a NATO missile shield in September 2011, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that the shield was an American plot to protect Israel from counterattack should Israel target Iran’s nuclear facilities. Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz retorted that the system’s aim was to secure Europe as well as Turkey. In the Syrian civil war that began in 2012, Turkey and Iran backed opposite camps. When Saudi Arabia intervened militarily in Yemen’s civil war in March 2015, Erdoğan said in an interview with France 24 TV: “We support Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen,” adding that “Iran and the terrorist groups must withdraw” from the nation. Yet he undertook a pre-planned visit on April 1 to Tehran where he signed eight economic cooperation agreements with Iran. He lamented the fact that the target of $30 billion two-way trade had become stuck at $14 billion and hoped for a pickup with the lifting of sanctions on Iran. But mutual trade in 2016 fell to $9.67 billion. He met Rouhani and, during a joint press conference, he addressed his host as “my brother,” emphasizing that Turkey and Iran should join hands to bring a peaceful outcome to the Yemeni crisis. Accompanied by Rouhani, Erdoğan met with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and proposed joint mediation efforts by Iran and Turkey in the region. Since then the Turkey-Iran entente has strengthened. In June 2017, in the crisis created by Riyadh to isolate Qatar diplomatically and economically, Iran and Turkey allied actively to help Qatar.
In all three cases, economic interests were paramount. Iran shares the gigantic Pars gas field with Qatar, and Turkey’s large construction companies help build stadiums for the 2022 FIFA World Cup tournaments Observation Of all problems being faced by Turkey, Russia and Iran in their efforts to forge a formidable alliance, the US disinterest in seeing growth of this alliance getting strengthened – and hence play politics to divide them- could be very dangerous for their unity. . Illegal war in Syria that began years ago as part of US plan ostensibly to dethrone or kill Assad could not be ended as Mr. Sam the USA doesn’t want to create peaceful situation in West Asia until Israel becomes real superpower of the region. War situation continues to deteriorate in Syria where both state and non-state fronts are engaged in killing the Syrians in order perhaps to showcase their faith in democracy. Many rounds of UN-brokered Syria peace talks that were held could not solve the war tragedies and refugee crises. The goal of bringing President Bashar al-Assad and various armed opposition factions to a political settlement that could put an end to half a decade of civil war in the country has not been achieved so far. The November 22 gathering in Sochi debated by Iran, Turkey, and Russia did not make any headway. In Sochi, the Iranians, Russians, and Turks ostensibly agreed on one key point: that all parties should respect Syria’s territorial integrity. Russia has a strong and ongoing dialogue with every other state that matters on the question of Syria’s future, from the United States to Israel to the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. In turn, Tehran naturally fears that deals are being cut over its head and to its detriment. The United States and Israel are sternly opposed to any settlement in Syria that would institutionalize Iran’s presence there. Mollifying Washington, the Iranians rightfully worry, can only come at the expense of Tehran’s influence and interests in postwar Syria. And as Iran looks to maximize its relevance in postwar Syria, the country’s hardline faction, represented by the IRGC, is banking that its years of
investment in various Syrian and other Arab militias will finally pay off. Back in 1979, immediately after the Iranian Revolution, the IRGC began as a small group of die-hard devotees to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The IRGC’s goal now is to eventually turn the Syrian militias currently under its control into semi-state actors that will become permanent instruments of Iranian influence in Syria, akin to how Hezbollah operates in Lebanon.
From a broader Syrian perspective, however, it is hard to see how enduring peace can return to this country with mini war theatres all over.