Al Monitor: Turkey treads carefully on new gas pipeline with Russia

A new world seemed to be in the making when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Turkey on Dec. 1. Putin, with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his side, announced that Russia and Turkey would boost their multibillion dollar trade by building a new natural gas pipeline, Turkish Stream. Fed up with the European Union’s foot-dragging, the Russian president canceled the South Stream project, which would have carried Russian natural gas under the Black Sea directly into the European Union via Bulgaria.

Putin hoped to accomplish several objectives through Turkish Stream: to enlist Erdogan as an ally in Moscow’s natural gas negotiations with EU members Greece, Italy and Austria, and to steer Turkey away from the West and in a more pro-Russian direction. Putin’s visit appeared so promising and the two leaders so defiant that one columnist talked about the “two Rambos, Putin and Erdogan,” and how they “were taking on the West.”

But despite initially optimistic analyses, Ankara and Moscow have yet to finalize a deal on Turkish Stream. Significant disagreements have slowed down the talks between the Turkish Ministry of Energy and Russia’s state-owned Gazprom. In fact, the treacherous nature of the international energy trade could wreck the proposed project.

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