*Will Turkey's AKP government abort the Nabucco project?
*...while Nabucco project in the balance on EU summit's eve
*Medvedev promotes Russia's European security initiative
*Police raids reveal links between Kurdish Hezbollah and the al-Qaeda network
**New in the Jamestown blog on Russia and Eurasia (http://www.jamestown.org/blog): Medvedev Replaces Russian Military Intelligence Chief
Turkish Government Stalls on Nabucco Project Ahead of Critical Deadlines
The EU's Prague summit would have been an ideal venue for the IGA's signing, with a fall-back option to sign it in June at a meeting of heads of states and governments in Turkey. This fall-back option has been designed as a symbolic reward to Turkey, in the event that Turkey's AKP government lifted the logjam it has forced on its Nabucco consortium partners and on the supplier country Azerbaijan.
However, in a mid-April letter to the European Commission, the content of which is broadly known around the EU headquarters, Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler has reintroduced some old issues and raised new ones.
Surprisingly, Guler's letter now proposes to place the Turkish stretch of the Nabucco pipeline under two sets of laws: European legislation and Turkish legislation. There is no clarity in the letter about the cost-based tariff regime, which had been agreed at the Budapest summit and enshrined in that communiqué. Regarding taxation, Guler's letter suggests vague language with loopholes in it, instead of adhering to the EU-standard "best-endeavor clause." Suddenly, the letter is asking the European Commission to send a new IGA draft before June 1.
According to the letter, the AKP government wants the EU to demonstrate due concern for Turkey's supply security. This oft-used euphemism denotes Ankara's claim to lift off a portion of Azerbaijani gas at a cheap price for Turkish consumption or re-export for profit, at Azerbaijan's expense.
Crucially, Guler's letter to the EU indicates no forward movement on the transit agreement for Azerbaijani gas. Azerbaijan thus far is the only supply source for Nabucco in the short term; and is also the only transit option for Turkmen gas in the medium term. The AKP government, however, pursues a delivery-at-frontier (DAF) agreement, whereby would buy certain volumes of Azerbaijani gas and use, resell, or store those volumes. Not content to function as a transit partner to Europe -as Ukraine and Georgia do- the AKP government seeks a "hub" role, unwarranted by the economic fundamentals and overplaying Turkey's political hand vis-à-vis the EU.
Thus, the AKP government's stalling on the transit agreement could abort the EU's project altogether. It also hits hard at Azerbaijan on two counts: economically, by blocking Azerbaijan's export outlet to the West; and strategically, by forcing Baku to consider reorienting its gas exports toward Russia. By the same token the AKP government undermines Georgia's key function as a non-Russian delivery route for Caspian energy exports.
Guler's letter reflects his government's tactics -or at the very least his ministry's and Botas state company's tactics- in these negotiations: reopening issues that the European partners had deemed resolved and asking at each stage for more time. Conversely, the government claims that European partners are overly preoccupied with small details, seemingly underestimating the importance of "details" in the EU's legal environment. In this latest case, Ankara is also blaming the EU for failing to present a unified position. Such failures do occur often in EU policy-making; but the EU has finally managed to present a unified position on the fundamentals of the Nabucco project during the last several months and is eager to move ahead with the project. Ankara's criticism on these points, therefore, is beginning to look like an alibi to use in the event that the IGA's signing is held up by the AKP government's own tactics (EDM, March 4, 5, 16, April 20).
Signing the IGA is crucial to strengthening confidence of supplier countries and potential investors in the project. Meanwhile, some Turkish representatives suggest off the record, that the summit envisaged to be held in June in Turkey could go ahead if the IGA is merely initialled, rather than signed. Such an expectation is unrealistic, however. No summit on Nabucco will be held in Turkey without the IGA agreement being signed.
--Vladimir Socor
Nabucco Project Faces Turkish Hurdles at Critical Turn
Capitalizing on the European Commission's November 2008 initiative to promote the Corridor and to create a Caspian Development Corporation, the Budapest meeting set the goal of signing the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) and at least clear the way for signing the Project Support Agreements (PSA's) during the first half of 2009. In March the EU allocated 200 million Euros to the Nabucco project as seed capital for the first time ever, with more expected after the IGA and PSA's are signed. Drawing on that seed funding, the Nabucco project company has already begun contracting work from some engineering firms in the transit countries.
Turkey's AKP government, however, continues to obstruct the project, causing it to lose momentum again as it nears the landmark signing dates. Clearly, this government does not share the EU's goal of moving forward with Nabucco by signing the IGA and clearing the way for the PSA's. Instead, the AKP government has developed a vested interest in dragging out the project, using it as leverage on the EU in the even longer-dragging EU-Turkey accession negotiations; and trying to leverage it also on extraneous issues such as the Cyprus conflict (EDM, March 4, 5, 16, April 20).
Unless the EU has a serious dialogue with the AKP government, the latter can continue stalling on Nabucco and even on other issues of interest to the EU (while using similar tactics in NATO). The EU can have that serious conversation with Ankara on the Nabucco project. The United States also supports Nabucco politically, but seems currently in a poor position to weigh in with Turkey effectively on this issue. President Barack Obama avoided raising the Nabucco issue during his recent visit to Turkey.
Instead, the U.S. became the party seeking Turkey's favors on a range of strategic and political issues during Obama's visit.
Turkey's ambitions to become an energy "hub" constitute the wrong basis for policy planning in Ankara on energy, regional policy, and on relations with the EU. The AKP government can only achieve such ambitions at the expense of supplier countries' resources and at European consumers' expense.
Meanwhile, Ankara is negotiating with Moscow about a further increase in imports of Russian gas through the Blue Stream pipeline and its proposed extension, Blue Stream Two. As part of its strategic partnership with Russia, the AKP government (mainly through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in this case) has even been trying to include Gazprom into the Nabucco project.
For any such deliveries, however, Gazprom expects to use mainly Turkmen gas (or gas swapped with Turkmenistan). Gazprom even hopes to use some Azerbaijani gas, if the AKP government continues to obstruct Azerbaijan's westward outlet. Those would be the same gas volumes that should find their way from Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, bypassing Russia, via Georgia and Turkey to Europe, in accordance with the primary vision of Turkey as a corridor for Caspian gas to the EU. Instead of a European corridor, however, the AKP government would turn Turkey into a gate-keeper and toll-extractor; or even into a corridor for Gazprom-delivered gas from Central Asia in the guise of "Russian" gas.
Meanwhile, Turkey buys Azerbaijani gas far below market prices and would only readjust it slightly, nowhere near commercial value. Ankara has just reaffirmed that position in the government's retort to Azerbaijani State Oil Company's chairman Rovnag Abdullayev on this issue (ANS TV, Baku, Anatolia News Agency, April 25; Hurriyet, April 26).
Inadvertently, the EU and the United States (most recently during Obama's visit) have conveyed to the AKP government an exalted sense of its importance to the West. Apparently encouraged to feel indispensable, it is overplaying its hand with growing boldness toward the EU and within NATO. Such tactics are already boomeranging. They have recently strengthened the opposition in some major European political circles to the idea of Turkey joining the EU, or turned some former supporters and fence-sitters into opponents.
When Turkish officials stall on Nabucco, or turn it into leverage on the EU to accelerate accession negotiations, the obvious response would be to turn the tables and seek Ankara's cooperation on Nabucco and other energy issues as a prerequisite to any acceleration of accession negotiations. Turkey's behavior on Nabucco will also inevitably be considered in any future decision on the transport of Iranian gas to Europe. In that case, Turkey would have to be circumvented. By stalling and posing unacceptable conditions on Nabucco, the AKP government is losing Europe's confidence in Turkey's reliability as an energy partner to the EU.
--Vladimir Socor
Medvedev's Macro-European Ambitions Ring Hollow
President Dmitry Medvedev paid a state visit to Finland last week anticipating a warm welcome on "safe ground," since it was with Russia's help that Finland started building its own statehood exactly 200 years ago (Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Vremya novostei, April 22). He paid due respect to the memory of Carl Mannerheim, who led then newly-independent Finland in the "Winter War" with the USSR in 1940, but showed little interest in minor matters of bilateral relations -disappointing his traditionally pragmatic hosts (www.gazeta.ru, April 22). Instead, Medvedev tried to refresh his initiative on launching an all-European political process leading to a new collective security treaty. He first announced this idea last June in Berlin and has referred to it many times since without elaborating on the content (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, April 23).
The Finns remained indifferent to Medvedev's vision despite the catchy name "Helsinki plus" and despite the undeniable fact that Russia's dissatisfaction with the existing security system makes it seriously unstable. The examples that Medvedev brought to illustrate this fact -from the conventional arms control breakdown to the August war in the Caucasus- proved primarily Russia's readiness to violate the post-Cold War norms of behavior, and there are few reasons to believe that new norms that would suit Moscow's ambitions could satisfy its neighbors. Medvedev explained that he expected long and complicated talks, but the start of this as yet hypothetical process will inevitably signify that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is compromised, while undermining NATO's role as the central security-providing institution. Russia's "principled" course against ceding any political territory to the Alliance was enriched with a new quarrel last week as the Foreign Ministry vigorously condemned NATO's "destabilizing" exercises in Georgia scheduled for May (RIA-Novosti, April 23).
Medvedev's counterparts will eventually abandon their "we-will-think-about-it" approach and tell him bluntly that a new Kellogg-Briand pact is a non-starter. Meanwhile, Medvedev tries to supplement his grand initiative with a no less ambitious proposal for replacing the Energy Charter with a new framework agreement. The inconclusive Russian-Ukrainian "gas war" has proven that the current arrangement does not work, but the draft unveiled by Medvedev in Helsinki and uploaded to the presidential website is first and foremost self-serving (Vedomosti, Kommersant, April 21). Its three main goals are to secure expanded demand for Russian gas while returning to "fair" prices, to abolish the EU plans for liberalizing the gas market, and to discipline the states responsible for providing transit -first of all Ukraine. Moscow hardly expects that such a "conceptual approach" will secure support within Europe but it might help in making the Energy Charter null and void -and that would be a perfect hit as far as Russia is concerned.
Putting more emphasis on spin in this grand energy bargain, Moscow maintains high levels of activity on all European gas fronts. Medvedev sought to get from the Finns the final approval for the delayed Nord Stream pipeline project across the Baltic Sea. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sent a different signal by canceling his participation in an energy summit in Sofia, Bulgaria, sending instead Minister of Energy Sergei Shmatko, who insisted that the EU should grant priority to the Russian pipeline project South Stream across the Black Sea (Kommersant, April 22). Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin went to an international conference on energy transit in Ashgabat seeking to calm down President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, who had blamed Gazprom for the explosion on a pipeline in Turkmenistan (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, April 21). In neither case, however, was significant progress registered, and Moscow now often finds itself in the uncomfortable position of suppliant instead of negotiating from a position of gas strength.
Berdimuhamedov apparently presumes that Gazprom is not what it used to be, while probably not reflecting much on the predicament of his own gas-centric mono-state. Gazprom is indeed so tightly integrated into Russia's structures of governance that it is affected by the general economic downturn -even if the world energy prices have stabilized. Forecasts for the Russian economy are revised almost weekly -and invariably for the worse. The GDP decline in the first quarter has been corrected from 7.2 percent to 9.5 percent, so the Ministry for Economic Development now predicts a 6 percent contraction for the year (Kommersant, April 24). These macro-figures imply a 30 to 40 percent reduction in the state budget income, and if in the current year the government aims at minimal cuts in spending, covering the deficit from the accumulated reserves, by 2010 this policy will be unsustainable. Evgeni Gontmaher, an economist from the Institute of Contemporary Development that enjoys Medvedev's patronage, argues that that the presidential address in May with the key guidelines for the 2010 budget -which must be presented by the government to the parliament by August 25- could be crucially important for Russia's recovery from the devastating recession (Vedomosti, April 22).
Large-scale sequestration and cuts for every program will mean that the government has failed to identify its priorities and set Russia on a course of stagnation at the "bottom" of the crisis (www.gazeta.ru, April 22). That might suit the interests of some parts of the ruling bureaucracy, but will leave the populist demands unaddressed and the main pressure groups, from the siloviki to Gazprom, entirely dissatisfied. The ruling "tandem" is quite possibly incapable of making hard choices, as Medvedev's vague ideas about modernization contradict Putin's commitment to preserve key elements of his power system. This system of corrupt patronage and triumphant consumerism was perhaps organic to Russia in the period of petro-prosperity (Rossiiskaya gazeta, April 21). It is, however, simply not viable in the years of scarcity and survival-of-the-fittest -so the Russians are remembering Boris Yeltsin, who died two years ago, with a new respect for a leader that steered the country across a sea of troubles.
--Pavel K. Baev
Turkish Police Target al-Qaeda Network in Turkey
The counterterrorism units of the Gaziantep, Konya, Adana, Kahramanmaras and Sanliurfa provincial police departments staged simultaneous raids on a number of addresses in their respective cities. As a result 37 suspected al-Qaeda members were detained. It was reported that one of the suspects in Gaziantep was appointed as the leader of al-Qaeda in Turkey after Mehemet Polat was killed in a shootout in Gaziantep province on January 24 2008 (Star, April 21). Another suspect in Gaziantep was found to have spent time in al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, along with six other detainees. They were allegedly forming a new organization affiliated with al-Qaeda (Today's Zaman, April 25). It was the second such police raid carried out during April. On April 9 police in Eskisehir province arrested 28 suspected al-Qaeda members, seven of whom were imprisoned (www.ntvmsnbc.com, April 11).
Despite political analysts arguing that al-Qaeda uses Turkey as a bridge to cross into the "Jihad region" (www.ntvmsnbc.com, April 24), which was especially true following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the recent wave of arrests point to the reorganization of al-Qaeda within Turkey. The Eskisehir unit of al-Qaeda was organizing "discussion groups" to recruit new members into its network (Milliyet, April 9). The group in Gaziantep was in also in a process of reorganization, while those in Kahramanmaras were forming an al-Qaeda affiliated organization (Star, April 21).
During the recent police raid one Uzbek national was also arrested. The Turkish press reported that the Uzbek was a fugitive from Uzbekistan who entered the country from Afghanistan, organizing al-Qaeda in the city of Konya (Star, April 21).
Al-Qaeda's attempts to reorganize within Turkey in order to attack Western targets has often made the headlines (NTV, January 2, 2008). However, the Turkish police have thus far successfully prevented al-Qaeda's attacks in Turkey. Police sources told Jamestown that Turkish law enforcement agencies are one of the most successful within democratic countries, when it comes to preventing terrorist attacks. The same sources suggest that the Turkish Salafi communities have 5,000 to 6,000 members, most of whom avoid adopting any violent strategy. Nonetheless, this community serves as a potential recruitment pool for al-Qaeda operatives. In fact, most police raids have concentrated on cities such as Gaziantep, Konya, or Istanbul where the Salafi communities live; suggesting the existence of a relationship between al-Qaeda members and the Salafi communities within Turkey.
In addition, Gaziantep, the largest city in the southeast, is known to be a major operation center for Kurdish Hezbollah (KH) (CNNTurk, January 24, 2008). An earlier raid carried out in 2008 on al-Qaeda networks in Gaziantep resulted in al-Qaeda members and police exchanging gunfire. At that time one police officer and two al-Qaeda members were killed. After that operation the Turkish press reported that former KH members had regrouped under the al-Qaeda movement (www.nethaber.com, January 25, 2008).
Despite KH denying claims that it cooperates with al-Qaeda, the evidence indicates that the two organizations have been actively cooperating in recent years. Aksion, a weekly news magazine, reported the details of al-Qaeda and KH relations. For instance, in 2007 police conducted operations in Bingol and Koceeli provinces, on the al-Qaeda network and detained the KH militant Muhammed Yasar and his group that was functioning on behalf of the al-Qaeda network in Turkey. In 2008, police operations in Istanbul, Ankara, and Diyarbakir revealed that high level Hezbollah leaders had cooperated with al-Qaeda and that KH even sent some of its members to Afghanistan for training (Aksiyon, April 20). The arrests in these police raids against al-Qaeda in Turkey show that a majority of its members are descendents of Kurdish militants, and have had contact with the KH.
The recent police raids suggested that a cooperative relationship exists between the KH and al-Qaeda operatives in Turkey. Following its heavy defeat in 2000 the KH abandoned its violent strategy. Intermittently, KH operatives have been arrested within the al-Qaeda network. It is unclear whether the KH urges its militants who once functioned within its armed wing, to join forces with al-Qaeda, or if this represents a purely individual choice. The Turkish police discovered during the recent raid that the KH maintains operatives, who have knowledge of weapons and explosives, which it wants to install in the al-Qaeda network (Zaman, April 21).
Despite all the indicators concerning these links the KH strongly rejects such allegations. Yet it has offered no explanation on what happened to its members serving within its armed wing. Given that the KH also functions where the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) operates which regards the KH as a major enemy, it might not be viable for to abandon violence. In fact, the KH in its press releases uses threatening language claiming that it has an ability to defeat its rivals. One reason behind the KH denials of its relationship with al-Qaeda might be rooted in its traditional support coming from Kurdish communities within Europe. Recognition of its links with al-Qaeda might damage its interests. It is however, unclear how this relationship may evolve in the future.
--Emrullah Uslu
