Turkey and Iran Too energetic a friendship

An attempt to bypass Russia annoys the United States


COCKING a snook at America seems an odd way to launch a second term in office for a government eager to prove its pro-Western credentials. Yet that is what Turkey's mildly Islamist Justice and Development party (AK) appears to be doing, just weeks after its landslide victory in the July 22nd parliamentary election.

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dispatched his energy minister, Hilmi Guler, to Iran last week where he concluded a raft of deals. They include the establishment of a joint company to carry up to 35 billion cubic metres of Iranian natural gas via Turkey to Europe, and the construction of three thermal power plants by Turkish companies in Iran.

America swiftly complained. “If you ask our opinion, do we think it's the right moment to be making investments in the Iranian oil and gas sector, no we don't,” sniffed a State Department spokesman. There were mutterings about possible sanctions. But Turkey insists it has the right to pursue its interests. And Iran is delighted. “Nobody can come between Iran and Turkey,” Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, crowed recently.

Mr Erdogan's critics have seized on his dealings with Iran as proof that he is trying to steer Turkey away from the West. In fact, they have just the opposite aim: to boost Turkey's chances of joining the European Union by making it a vital energy corridor for oil and gas flowing between the energy-rich former Soviet states, the Middle East and Europe.

This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. EU countries import half their energy, with around a fifth of their oil and gas coming from Russia's state monopoly, Gazprom. The need to diversify sources was driven home in 2005 when Gazprom arbitrarily increased the price of gas it supplies to Ukraine by pipeline. Russia's use of its energy riches to flex its muscles on the world stage is one reason why America is lobbying so hard for the creation of an east-west energy corridor—a network of oil and gas pipelines running from former Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan via Turkey, and on to European markets.

The first big step towards weakening Russia's grip was the inauguration in 2005 of a multi-billion-dollar pipeline carrying Azerbaijani oil from offshore Caspian fields to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, in the southern Mediterranean. This provocation, from the Russian point of view, was compounded by the launch of a parallel line carrying natural gas from Azerbaijan (and eventually, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan), which was completed last year. But Gazprom hit back by raising the price of the gas it sells to the Azerbaijanis, who rely on Russia for nearly half their supply.

This, in turn, forced them to use more of their own gas, leaving them unable to fill the Turkish pipeline, which lay idle until last month.

In a further blow, Gazprom announced a venture with Italy's Eni in June to build a line across the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria. All this makes it less likely that Turkey will, by 2011, achieve its dream of extending a recently completed pipeline to Greece as far as southern central Europe.

That is why Turkey has turned to Iran, according to Necdet Pamir, a veteran Turkish energy analyst. Iranian gas would not only help to fill the Nabucco pipeline, another mooted conduit from the Middle East or Central Asia, bypassing Russia, but would also reduce Turkey's own dependence on Russian supplies: over half of Turkey's natural-gas demand is met by Gazprom. Unlike the former Soviet producers, Iran controls several shipping lanes and borders Turkey. “The paradox for America is that Iran is the only country other than Iraq that can truly undermine Russia's [energy] supremacy,” observes Mr Pamir.