Cold winter fear grips Turkey

With a looming energy crisis on the horizon with Russia, Turkey has started looking for alternative suppliers for its energy needs, especially in natural gas. Turkey’s balanced approach to Russian-Georgian conflict has been put under increasing strain with Russia beginning to utilize economic tools to pressure Turkey.

Russia hopes that Turkey will cave in and break with the NATO camp when pressured enough and thus is causing significant losses in trade in Turkey. Russia may even halt the flow of natural gas, as Turkey depends on Russia to provide 65 percent of its demand for this resource. Yet analysts have urged the Turkish government to remain calm and not jeopardize relations with Moscow by openly siding with the West.


Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement on the weekend reflected a cautious approach. He said, “We would never want such a thing [cold war] to happen,” adding: “America is our ally and the Russian Federation is an important neighbor. Russia is our number one trade partner. We are supplying two-thirds of our energy from Russia. Fifty-two percent of our electricity comes from natural gas power plants. We will be left in the dark,” Erdoğan said.

The signs of strain between Russia and Turkey reached a new level last week when Russia imposed new customs barriers on Turkish trucks that transport exports to this country. Russia placed Turkey in the category of high-risk countries (for smuggled goods) and started to check all items loaded on trucks one by one instead of only examining samples from each truck, the normal method in customs.

Today’s Zaman