TPQ has released a new blog post by Ambassador Ünal Çeviköz: Testing Times in Turkey’s Relations with Russia
In his blog post, Ambassador Çeviköz takes up Russia’s recent military buildup in Syria and the implications thereof for Turkey-Russia relations. While the two countries have always been on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict, Russia’s intervention in the civil war – which has helped strengthen Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime against both ISIL and opposition forces – has widened the divide between Turkey and Russia and threatened to impact important areas of bilateral cooperation, such as energy.
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu have emphasized that ‘Turkish airspace is NATO airspace’ and that NATO would stand by Turkey if Russia continued its incursions into Turkish airspace.”
“In addition to natural gas, Turkey also imports oil from Russia and around 65 percent of Turkey’s energy needs – through imports of hydrocarbon resources – are met by Russia. Turkish-Russian energy links have been based on strong infrastructure and Turkey is not very likely to diversify its supplies in the short run.”
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