Moscow-Ankara: from competition to strategic partnership

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s scrapping of the South Stream project has put aside Russian-Turkish agreements reached at the 5th session of the Top-Level Cooperation Council. During Putin’s visit to Ankara, the sides signed 8 documents, including memorandums of understanding in the sectors of energy, business, labour and social protection and extradition of criminals.

Natalya Ulchenko, the head of the Turkish section of the RAS Institute of Oriental Studies, believes that Russian-Turkish relations had a breakthrough this year. “Visits of previous years between 2004 and 2014 were focused more on fixing, outlining and maybe partially developing the level of relations achieved between the two states.”

The latest visit, in Ulchenko’s opinion, is a breakthrough in relations. She believes that any ideas of a global strategic partnership of Russia and Turkey were formal in the past. Their partnership was developing on the background of competition in the international energy trade, the expert supposes.

She emphasized that common goals had become more important than controversies, partly because of the tensions between Russia and the EU. “Now, the controversies and even some elements of competition have been left in the past, become secondary to a certain extent, achievement of a common goal to boost gas supplies to Turkey and distribution of the additional volume of gas in Southern Europe is advancing to the forefront. Maybe Israel will appear here as an old project.”

Natalya Ulchenko says that improvement of relations with Russia may help Turkey realize its ambitions: “The historical and geographic irony of the situation is in the fact that Turkey, having no reserves of energy resources of its own, has real chances to take an important spot in international trade of energy resources, in international transit of energy resources.”

The strategy of energy development of Turkey has given Russia a role without taking into account its readiness to use Turkey’s potential for gas transit to the international market. This restriction has been removed and plans to reach a trade turnover of $100 billion are becoming a reality.

The expert still sees structural problems in bilateral trade. “In other words, it is exchange of Russian shipments of energy resources for technologically uncomplicated and quite cheap Turkish imports. Structural problems remain, and their solution is not very simple, because it is linked to the settlement of a global goal to overcome such complicated economic problems as the trap for medium development that Turkey is obviously part of, and it needs to find a way out of the trap. It is associated with complication of the technical level of production and exports. Only in this case can there be talks about any structural moves in bilateral trade. By the way, Russia has the same problems. Prospects for growing trade turnover are becoming real, but the prospects for structural evolution of bilateral trade are more complex,” concludes Ulchenko.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s scrapping of the South Stream project has put aside Russian-Turkish agreements reached at the 5th session of the Top-Level Cooperation Council. During Putin’s visit to Ankara, the sides signed 8 documents, including memorandums of understanding in the sectors of energy, business, labour and social protection and extradition of criminals.Natalya Ulchenko, the head of the Turkish section of the RAS Institute of Oriental Studies, believes that Russian-Turkish relations had a breakthrough this year. “Visits of previous years between 2004 and 2014 were focused more on fixing, outlining and maybe partially developing the level of relations achieved between the two states.”The latest visit, in Ulchenko’s opinion, is a breakthrough in relations. She believes that any ideas of a global strategic partnership of Russia and Turkey were formal in the past. Their partnership was developing on the background of competition in the international energy trade, the expert supposes.She emphasized that common goals had become more important than controversies, partly because of the tensions between Russia and the EU. “Now, the controversies and even some elements of competition have been left in the past, become secondary to a certain extent, achievement of a common goal to boost gas supplies to Turkey and distribution of the additional volume of gas in Southern Europe is advancing to the forefront. Maybe Israel will appear here as an old project.”Natalya Ulchenko says that improvement of relations with Russia may help Turkey realize its ambitions: “The historical and geographic irony of the situation is in the fact that Turkey, having no reserves of energy resources of its own, has real chances to take an important spot in international trade of energy resources, in international transit of energy resources.”The strategy of energy development of Turkey has given Russia a role without taking into account its readiness to use Turkey’s potential for gas transit to the international market. This restriction has been removed and plans to reach a trade turnover of $100 billion are becoming a reality.The expert still sees structural problems in bilateral trade. “In other words, it is exchange of Russian shipments of energy resources for technologically uncomplicated and quite cheap Turkish imports. Structural problems remain, and their solution is not very simple, because it is linked to the settlement of a global goal to overcome such complicated economic problems as the trap for medium development that Turkey is obviously part of, and it needs to find a way out of the trap. It is associated with complication of the technical level of production and exports. Only in this case can there be talks about any structural moves in bilateral trade. By the way, Russia has the same problems. Prospects for growing trade turnover are becoming real, but the prospects for structural evolution of bilateral trade are more complex,” concludes Ulchen