Turkey and Israel can work together to transport Israeli gas to Europe. The two countries will discuss energy co-operation during talks next month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday (February 4th).
The two countries expelled their ambassadors in 2018 after a fierce dispute. Relations have remained strained since then, with Ankara condemning Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its policy toward the Palestinians.
Israel, for its part, has called on Turkey to stop supporting the Palestinian group Hamas, which rules Gaza.
However, Turkey is trying to restore its strained relations with regional powers in the context of a “charm attack” launched in 2020.
In an apparent escalation after years of hostility, Erdogan said on Thursday that Israeli President Isaac Herzog would visit Turkey in mid-March.
“We can use Israeli gas in our country. “Apart from using it, we can also take part in a joint effort to get it across Europe,” Erdogan told reporters on his return from Ukraine.
While Erdogan has spoken to Herzog amid tensions in the past, the Israeli presidency has largely played a ritual role. In November, he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – the first such phone call in years.
The discovery in recent years of huge gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean has aroused the interest of neighboring countries, but has exacerbated geopolitical tensions between Turkey and its neighbors.
To transport this abundant gas to the rest of Europe and help achieve the goal of reducing energy dependence on Russia, Cyprus, Greece and Israel entered into an agreement in December 2018 to build a gas pipeline, with the EastMed name.
This 1,367-mile pipeline will run 106 miles south of Cyprus and end in Otranto, in southern Italy, after crossing Crete and mainland Greece.
Recently, however, the United States seems to have lost interest in EastMed, which has paved the way for new geopolitical constructions.
Washington’s turn in the EastMed pipeline project came as a shock to Athens, with SYRIZA accusing the government of not negotiating its agreements with the Americans.
Natural gas from Iraqi Kurdistan
Erdogan met on Wednesday with Necervan Barzani, the president of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Asked what was discussed, Erdogan said Ankara wants to sign a gas supply agreement with Iraq and is holding talks on the issue.
“We now have the issue of Iraq on our agenda. Now we think about it. “There may be a movement of gas from Iraq to Turkey,” Erdogan said, adding that Barzani had promised to facilitate talks.
Turkey already imports oil from Kirkuk in northern Iraq to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, where it is loaded on ships and exported mainly to European buyers.
The 960-kilometer (600-mile) Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline has often been the target of attacks by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is aligned with the KRG and has been waging an uprising against the Turkish government for decades.
Last year, the pipeline carried about 450,000 barrels a day. In addition to Iraqi government oil, it is also the only pipeline for crude oil exports from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
Turkey maintains a military presence in northern Iraq and regularly conducts airstrikes and ground operations against PKK forces operating in the Qandil Mountains.
euractiv.gr
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