CrossTalk: Syrian War Outcome

‘Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. What could the possible outcome regarding the Syrian Civil War be? Does the US really want Russia to be part of a negotiated settlement? Is the Syrian opposition becoming more dangerous to the US and its allies? CrossTalking with Ariel Cohen and Nabil Mikhail (15 May 2013)’.

Op-Ed: Pipelineistan and Turkey: The Geo-Political Realities behind Resource Rivalry and the Looming Climate Catastrophe

Recently, I wrote a piece of possibly wider interest for my column ‘The Erimtan Angle’ in the Istanbul Gazette.

In the 21st century, humanity has suddenly come face to face with the stupendous power of nature again. In the latter part of the previous century warnings regarding man-made or anthropogenic climate change started being voiced – arguably commencing in earnest with Professor Hansen’s testimony in front of the U.S. Senate during the summer of 1988. These dire words of caution arguably culminated in Al Gore’s sensational and “inconvenient” 2006 film. The Industrial Revolution and humanity’s subsequent immoderate burning of fossil fuels leading to a disproportionate increase in so-called greenhouse gases appear to be at the root of this apparently unnatural fluctuation in global temperatures – fluctuations which can lead to extreme weather events, such as hurricanes or floods. Very recently, in the first week of March this year actually, researchers from Oregon State University (OSU) and HarvardUniversity seem to have delivered the final verdict on anthropogenic climate change. They namely published the conclusions of their latest study in the journal Science, broadcasting to the wider world their concern with the state of the earth. Their findings reveal that our planet is warmer today than it has ever been during 70 to 80% of the last 11,300 years. As a result, the search for alternative fuels, fuels that would not lead to more greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere, should be the world’s leadership’s top priority given the looming threat of climate catastrophe that will eventually turn earth into a planet uninhabitable by humanity. In contrast, geo-political concerns and the simmering resource wars are such that attention remains focused on the remnants of earlier geologies. As a result, the consumption of fossil fuels continues unabated and the search for more hydrocarbon reserves follows suit – meaning that more and more greenhouse gases will keep on being added to the atmosphere for years and possibly decades to come. The war that in many ways started the 21st century can also be interpreted as having a close relationship to man’s endless thirst for ever-more fossil fuels.

The start of the invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001 was presented as an act of war in direct response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11. But there is a back-story to Bush’s relationship with the land of Afghanistan. As such, the Taliban, in charge of the country since 27 September 1996 when they conquered the capital Kabul, sent a delegation to Texas in 1997. In Texas, the then-governor George W. Bush was instrumental in arranging meetings with the Texas oil firm Unocal. Quoting from a piece I wrote in 2010:

Unocal and its partners planned to build a 1,000-mile gas pipeline from resource-rich Turkmenistan to Multan in Pakistan [and then to India], passing through the Taliban heartland of Kandahar. In the waning years of the 20th century, the BBC dutifully reported that this deal was part “of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea.” In other words, the Unocal deal with the Taliban was instrumental in the 21st-century development of what the Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid has termed the “New Great Game,” in reference to the 19th-century rivalry between the Russian and British empires for supremacy in Central Asia . . . In the south [of Afghanistan], Kandahar is [now] awaiting the completion of the TAPI pipeline, which will traverse the province on its way to Pakistan and India. In meetings held in the Turkmen capitol of Ashgabat [on] April 17-18, [2010] the go-ahead was given and work on the lucrative project started in May, with 2015 as the provisional completion date when Turkmenistan’s liquid gas will start flowing southward. The US government is one of the strongest backers of this project. How do these machinations surrounding the pipeline project relate to the [still ongoing] war in the Hindu Kush region? According to former Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik, approximately two months prior to 9/11, the Bush administration had already decided to topple the Taliban regime and install a more amenable transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place. In July 2001 a four-day meeting was held in Berlin under the portentous heading of “brainstorming on Afghanistan.” The TAPI project was undoubtedly high on the session’s agenda. Literally one week after the attacks, the BBC’s former Pakistan correspondent George Arney related that Naik had “no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks.” And Niaz Naik proved right. Was he therefore really a man who knew too much? In early August 2009, Naik was tortured and murdered in his residence in Sector F-7/3 of Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad.

Did the TAPI project really play such an important role in the decision to invade Afghanistan? Was the outset of the continuing war against the Taliban (and “its Al-Qaeada allies” as the oft-repeated phrase goes) rather a calculated move to gain the initiative in the Central Asian resource war? Central Asia is a territory literally inundated with pipelines and in this context the investigative reporter Pepe Escobar coined the phrase Pipelineistan to refer to the CaspianBasin and the whole of Eurasia basically. And not just the West is addicted to fossil fuels being transported through this network of pipelines, the other global power which is China in equal measure relies on hydrocarbon assets being moved through Pipelineistan, converging in its Wild West, Xinjiang. From there, these assets are transported to mainland China in the east to fuel the ever-growing economy that has by now become the second-largest in the world. As for the TAPI pipeline, when the go-ahead, backed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), was given for the construction of this huge pipeline, measuring a staggering 1,735 kilometres, Turkey’s State Minister Zafer Çağlayan had also been present in Turkmenistan.

On Pipelineistan’s western edge, Turkey is now actively operating to be included in the scramble for the massive Turkmen gas reserves, located at the Dovletabad and the Galkynysh (‘Southern Yeloten – Osman’) deposits. In early 2012, Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov was in Turkey, visiting Ankara and Istanbul, and meeting Turkey’s President Abdullah Gül. And also signing a document containing this declaration: “The parties [, i.e. Turkey and Turkmenistan] confirmed the need for continuing work on the development of regional projects aimed at restoring the development of socio-economic spheres [in] Afghanistan. In this regard, the Turkish side expressed its interest in major projects, including the Turkmenistan – Afghanistan – Pakistan – India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, increasing supply of Turkmen electricity to Afghanistan, as well as projects of transport infrastructure development and expressed its support for these projects” – Turkey now clearly also wants to reap some benefits from the pipeline to transport Turkmen gas to the Arabian Sea.

Turkey also has its own stakes in the infrastructure of Pipelineistan. For starters, there is the BTC or Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline transporting Caspian oil to the Mediterranean. In 1992, the Turkish Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel first proposed the construction of such a pipeline connection. In the further course of the 1990’s, the pipeline project was personally supported by U.S. President Bill Clinton. And finally, on 18 November 1999, when the Ankara Declaration was signed by Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, Clinton’s Energy Secretary Bill Richardson called the event “a major foreign policy victory” for the U.S. – a statement indicative of the continuing geopolitical importance of Turkey as a bridge between east and west. In the first instance, the sanctions on Iraq following the first Gulf War (2 August 1990-28 February 1991) meant that the Kirkuk-Yumurtalık pipeline was no longer able to transport Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean, thereby crippling the Turkish economy and depriving the world economy of an important source of oil, given that Ceyhan was (and still is) a world-class facility able to supply large tankers. In addition, the fall of the Soviet Union subsequently also meant that the vast Caspian oil and gas reserves could now be integrated into the West’s energy supplies’ system. On 25 May 2005, the BTC pipeline was inaugurated at the Sangachal Terminal on the Caspian by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili and Turkey’s President Ahmet Sezer, joined by President Nursaltan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and United States Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman. The pipeline now daily transports 1 million barrels of Capian oil to the Mediterranean.

Another outlier of Pipelineistan present in Turkey is the Nabucco gas pipeline project, which has been in the works since 2005 and aims to be “the new gas bridge from Asia to Europe and the flagship project in the Southern Corridor”, connecting the EU with the major hydrocarbon sources in the Caspian and the Middle East. The project, aimed at liberating Europe from Russia’s energy stranglehold, has been beset by many problems and financial woes – with the German investor backing out last December. At the beginning of this month, the consortium backing the projected Nabucco pipeline signed a memorandum of co-operation with the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), basically cutting the length of the Nabucco pipeline in two and limiting the cost considerably. Originally, the Nabucco pipeline was supposed to start its route from central Anatolia, but now the pipeline will only start its westward journey through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria at the Turco-Bulgarian border, relying on TANAP to supply gas from the Caspian and the Middle East. This shortened version has been called Nabucco West and would constitute a major rival for Russia’s South Stream pipeline project. And once again, Turkey’s trans-Atlantic friend is all but supportive as voiced by US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland last year: “We strongly support Nabucco. We think it’s a very important project. It’s going to bring energy diversification on both sides and market diversification”. In other words, the interpersonal relations between Tayyip Erdoğan and Barrack Obama have not been futile. The U.S. clearly supports Turkey’s new pseudo-Ottoman programme, as a stable Turkey could very well become another foundation for America to build its renewed bridges into the Arab world, following the recent ‘spring weather’ and its ‘unexpected’ consequences. The Obama administration’s support for the west-bound section of Pipelineistan that is Nabucco also seems congruent with the U.S. and Turkey’s joint stance on the Assad regime, Turkey’s erstwhile friendly neighbour.

In fact, the recent civil war in Syria has actually ensured that the Nabucco pipeline project was given another lease of life. The protests against the Assad regime started in March 2011 turning violent the next month, while backdoor negotiations between Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus were underway. These talks led to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for the construction of a pipeline designed to deliver Iran’s natural gas to Iraq and Syria in the next three to five years at a cost of about $10 billion. From Syria, this pipeline could possibly also deliver gas to Lebanon and even to Europe in the future, securing a Mediterranean outlet for embattled Iran fighting sanctions and public disapproval. Now, the anti-Assad violence has ensured that this potential rival to Nabucco would not be able to emerge on the energy scene. Originally, Turkey planned to include Iran as a gas supplier to the pipeline, but the geo-political realities of the day and particularly the Obama administration’s continuation of the Bush era sanctions against Tehran, have managed to exclude Iran from the project. As a result, with the projected Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, Tehran would still have been able to supply the global market. In spite of Iran’s rich oil and gas holdings, the country is effectively excluded from the confines of Pipelineistan.

The leadership in Tehran, however, seems to be persistent in its effort to find alternative ways to find outlets for its hydrocarbon reserves. Now, Iran’s leadership is looking to the east. Recently, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari attended a ceremony at the Iran-Pakistani border, unveiling a plaque and inaugurating the construction of a pipeline ar a cost of some $1.5 billion. A joint statement read at the ceremony stated that “The completion of the pipeline is in the interests of peace, security and progress of the two countries. It will also consolidate the economic, political and security ties of the two nations”. Iranian gas is supposed to start flowing towards Pakistan at the end of next year. The Iranian gas would be most welcome in Pakistan as the country faces a shortfall of 2 billion cubic of natural gas feet per day and is actually going through a serious energy crisis at the moment. Pakistan is without electricity for up to six hours a day— leading to the loss of export revenues, the closure of tens of thousands of factories, and, most importantly, the loss of millions of jobs.

While the world’s leaders and oil corporations are devising more and more schemes to flood the global energy market with oil and gas to be burnt, the world actually appears to be approaching climate catastrophe at an increased pace. In his 2011 book Deep Future, the climatologist Curt Stager maintains that the effects of current climate change will persist for much longer than we can imagine – he paints the best-case scenario as a world that won’t fully recover from the effects of the burning of fossil fuels for tens of thousands of years, and possibly much longer. Still, the long-term has never been a great concern for Turkish, or any other, policy-makers and the decisions taken today, the pipelines built now and tomorrow, and the fossil fuels consumed in the years to come will change the world beyond recognition. Geo-political interests and the ongoing resource rivalries resulting from humanity’s acute addiction to fossil fuels, coupled with profit-hungry corporations eager to benefit from any kind of fossil fuels found anywhere, now seem to condemn humanity to a bleak future for the sake of short-term profits and power.[1]

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[1] C. Erimtan, “Pipelineistan and Turkey: The Geo-Political Realities behind Resource Rivalry and the Looming Climate Catastrophe” ‘The Erimtan Angle’, The Istanbul Gazette (15 March 2013). http://istanbulgazette.com/pipelineistan-and-turkey-the-geo-political-realities-behind-resource-rivalry-and-the-looming-climate-catastrophe/2013/03/15/.

Cross Talk: Syria as Proxy

‘Israel launched air strikes into Syria in response to border fire from the Golan Heights. What is Israel’s role in the Syrian civil war? What is their hidden agenda? And what about the future of the Golan Heights? CrossTalking with Sabah Al-Mukhtar, Dan Arbell and Nabil Mikhail (27 March 2013)’.

TRNN: Turkey, Israel and the Wider Middle East

‘Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Israel needed Obama to broker Turkey deal as Netanyahu’s policies and unstable region put Israel in a precarious position (25 March 2013)’.

South of the Border, 2010 (O. Stone)

South of the Border is a 2009 documentary film directed by Oliver Stone. The documentary premiered at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. Writer for the project Tariq Ali calls the documentary “a political road movie”. Stone stated that he hopes the film will help people better understand a leader who is wrongly ridiculed “as a strongman, as a buffoon, as a clown”. The film has Stone and his crew travel from the Caribbean down the spine of the Andes in an attempt to explain the “phenomenon” of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and account for the continent’s “pink tide” leftward tilt. A key feature is also Venezuela’s recent Bolivarian revolution and Latin America’s political progress in the 21st century. In addition to Chávez, Stone sought to flesh out several other Latin American presidents whose policies and personalities generally get limited, or according to Stone, biased media attention in the United States and Europe, notably: Evo Morales of Bolivia; Cristina Kirchner and former president Néstor Kirchner of Argentina; Rafael Correa of Ecuador; Raúl Castro of Cuba; Fernando Lugo of Paraguay; and Lula da Silva of Brazil.

Wilkerson Attacks Senate Resolution on Iran

‘Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Resolution S.RES.65 sends the message to Iran that the US objective is regime change, not a negotiated settlement to nuclear question (13 March 2013)’.

Empire: Iraq to Mali: The changing calculus of war (24 Feb 2013)

‘It has been 10 years since the US-led invasion of Iraq, which marked a turning point in the West’s so-called war on terror. The pretext of the Iraq war was security and freedom, but the bombastic and openly pronounced objective was no less than remaking the greater Middle East region. For the US, Iraq became a quagmire and a humiliation – a strategic and moral failure that the country has spent the last four years trying to forget. But how much has America’s calculus of war really changed? And as Africa becomes the new frontline in the ‘war on terror’, have the Europeans learnt from America’s mistakes? Empire explores the merits, objectives, costs and morality of these wars with our guests: John Nagl, a retired Lieutenant Colonel who co-authored the US army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual; Jean Marie Guehenno, the director of the Center of International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University, and former United Nations under secretary general for Peacekeeping Operations; Barbara Bodine, a professor at Princeton University and a former US Ambassador to the Republic of Yemen who also served with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq; and Christopher Hedges, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, former New York Times Middle East bureau chief, and author of several books, including War is a Force That Gives us Meaning and Empire of Illusion’ .

Secretary Kerry Delivers Remarks on Investing in a Strong Foreign Policy

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivers his first major public address on investing in a strong foreign policy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA on February 20, 2013.

Africa Update: Mali, Algeria & Libya or Al Qaeda All Around

‘The hostage crisis in Algeria appears to be over. Algeria’s special forces stormed the gas plant in the middle of the Sahara desert, to end the four day standoff. Local media say seven hostages and 11 gunmen were killed in the latest operation. Britain’s defense minister says he’s appalled at the loss of life. Al Jazeera‘s Paul Brennan has this report on how this hostage crisis unfolded. (19 Jan 2013)’.

‘The Algerian army raided the remote gas plant where Al Qaeda-backed militants had taken hostages. (20 Jan 2013)’.

The mere phrase “Al Qaeda-backed” nowadays seems sufficient to inspire global interest and generate media attention. On this blog I posted the following in 2011: “As I wrote some time ago in Today’s Zaman: ‘In the absence of a Soviet threat, the Obama administration has now declared al-Qaeda and its, by now more than legendary and . . . defunct, leader bin Laden to be the US’s main military adversary. While making sure not to declare an outright crusade against Islam and Muslims worldwide, President Obama continues Cold War policies that ensure that the “military-industrial complex,” to use President Eisenhower’s famous 1961 phrase, is kept busy, happy and well fed. Quite some time ago, the independent journalist Pepe Escobar declared that “Osama bin Laden may be dead or not. Al-Qaeda remains a catch-all ghost entity.” In other words, his contention is that the name al-Qaeda is used by the US to suggest the presence of a threat that is then employed to justify military intervention. The flipside of that stance is now that terrorists and like-minded individuals opposing US dominance and interventionism equally cite the name al-Qaeda to gain credibility, notoriety and media exposure’”.[1]  As a result, the fact that mainstream broadcasters like the BBC and Al Jazeera freely use the phrase in their reporting should not detract from the fact that the brand Al Qaeda is nothing but a fabricated fiction, as convincingly argued for by Adam Curtis’ documentary The Power of Nightmares (2004).[2]

What is happening in Mali, which just happens to be south of Libya where Colonel Gadhafi’s regime was so unceremoniously done away with by an “Assisted Rebellion”[3] recently???  Then Sarko was one of the prime-movers of the alliance backing the “Assisted Rebellion” and for good reason, as he was keen to secure access to Libyan oil and gas. At the moment, President Hollande seems to be at pains to secure his predecessor’s gains in the Maghreb, while equally also attempting to safeguard French access to Mali’s uranium reserves, one could argue.

Whereas the Al Qaeda is equally being used by both sides in the conflict today: ‘Back in the days prior to 9/11, Abu Musaab Abdulwadood used to head an organisation called Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat [‘al-Jamā‘ah as-Salafiyyah lid-Da‘wah wal-Qiṭāl’], which now carries the much more media-friendly name Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb [‘Tanẓīm al-Qā‘idah fī Bilād al-Maghrib al-Islāmī’]’.[4]  The outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy William Engdahl recently spoke to broadcaster RT: “Well, I think the intervention in Mali is another follow-up to the French role in other destabilizations that we’ve seen, especially in Libya last year with the toppling of the Gadhafi regime. In a sense this is French neocolonialism in action. But, interestingly enough, I think behind the French intervention is the very strong hand of the US Pentagon which has been preparing this partitioning of Mali, which it is now looming to be, between northern Mali, where al-Qaeda and other terrorists are supposedly the cause for French military intervention, and southern Mali, which is a more agricultural region. Because in northern Mali recently there have been huge finds of oil discovered, so that leads one to think that it’s very convenient that these armed rebels spill over the border from Libya last year and just at the same time a US-trained military captain creates a coup d’état in the Southern capital of Mali and installs a dictatorial regime against one of Africa’s few democratically elected presidents. So this whole thing bears the imprint of US Africom [US Africa Command] and an attempt to militarize the whole region and its resources. Mali is a strategic lynchpin in that. It borders Algeria which is one of the top goals of these various NATO interventions from France, the US and other sides. Mauritania, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Burkina Faso. All of this area is just swimming in untapped resources, whether it be gold, manganese, copper”.[5]

Not just uranium, but now there has also been found oil in Mali, as indicated by Engdahl. But there is really so much more at stake with regard to France’s nuclear energy needs, as demonstrated by the writer, activist, and subversive Doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford Adam Elliott-Cooper: “Like its neighbour, Niger, Mali is rich in a number of resources, including uranium. Following the ‘oil shock’ of 1973 in which the oil producing nations sharply increased the price of oil, the French decided an alternative route was needed. This alternative was nuclear energy, and over the 15 years following the shock, France built 56 nuclear reactors, more than any other country in the world. France now has 59 nuclear reactors, generating nearly 80% of its electricity, making it the world’s largest net electricity exporter. In 1999, the French parliament confirmed three objectives in relation to this newly found wealth, the first: security of supply”.[6]  Elliot-Cooper has this warning and note of hope: “The echoes of the scramble for Iraq’s resources, and the humanitarian catastrophe which followed are stark. The curbs on civil liberties in the West which the so-called War on Terror forces upon citizens is part of the same struggle that activists in West Africa are fighting against uranium mining corporations. Only by building links of solidarity between our continents can people begin to resist the disastrous intersection of the energy industries and state militarism both at home, and abroad”.[7]

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[1] Cfr. “SPECTRE Speaks: Al Qaeda Issues a Statement”A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (07 May 2011). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/spectre-speaks-al-qaeda-issues-a-statement/ and C. Erimtan, “A frontline in the war against Islamic Extremism or A Crucial Part of the Eurasian chessboard?” Today’s Zaman (25 January 2011) — http://tiny.cc/h3b5g.

[2] Cfr. “Killing a Monster: OBL and the War on Terror” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (15 May 2011). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/killing-a-monster-obl-and-the-war-on-terror/.

[3] Cfr. “Libya: Assisted Rebellion or Humanitarian Intervention???” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (07 April 2011). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/libya-assisted-rebellion-or-humanitarian-intervention/.

[4] Cfr. “Propaganda: Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Mali” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (29 November 2012). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/propaganda-al-qaeda-in-the-islamic-maghreb-and-mali/.

[5] “‘Pentagon’s hand behind French intervention in Mali’” RT (19 January 2013). http://rt.com/news/mali-intervention-pentagon-conflict-303/.

[6] Adam Elliott-Cooper, “Blood for Uranium: France’s Mali intervention has little to do with terrorism” Ceasefire (17 January 2013). http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/blood-uranium-frances-mali-intervention-terrorism/.

[7] Adam Elliott-Cooper, “Blood for Uranium: France’s Mali intervention has little to do with terrorism”.

Vladimir goes South: Putin meets Erdoğan in İstanbul, 3 December 2012

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN:

  Mr Prime Minister, ladies and gentlemen,

 The trusting & open spirit in which today’s talks took place and the level of our trade and economic ties give us every reason to consider that we have come to a friendly country. We have come not only to visit a partner and neighbour, but truly have come to a country that is our friend. The High-Level Cooperation Council, which just held its third meeting, has once again confirmed its importance as a bilateral partnership mechanism that has already proven its worth.

 The Council’s sector-specific expert groups have done a lot of preparation and ensured that we had a very substantive agenda indeed. We discussed in detail a wide range of issues.

 I note that our bilateral trade continues to develop fast. Russia is now in solid second place among Turkey’s trade and economic partners. Last year, despite the general decrease in global trade, our bilateral trade increased by 26 percent, and by a further 14 percent over the first nine months of this year. This is an excellent trend and a good result, especially when set against the global economy’s current difficulties. Our objective, as the Prime Minister just said, is to raise our bilateral trade to the $100-billion mark in the coming years. This is a completely realistic goal.

 We just signed the trade & economic and science and technology cooperation programme through to 2015. The programme aims to bolster our industrial cooperation and develop bilateral ties in construction, the metals industry and agriculture. It also contains measures to promote cooperation in science-intensive sectors such as telecommunications, space exploration and developing satellite systems.

 Of course, one of our big cooperation areas is the energy sector, and here, our work together is not limited to fossil fuels, even if they do play a very important part. As the Prime Minister knows, Russia is always ready to give our Turkish partners a shoulder to rely on at difficult times, and if there are any glitches with energy supplies from other countries, we will increase our deliveries at the first demand.

 We thank our Turkish friends for their decision on the South Stream project. Construction work will begin in a couple of days, and our Turkish partners and friends have been invited to attend this event too.

 I note too our joint plans to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant at Akkuyu. This is a big and promising project involving substantial investment – $20 billion. Russia is taking care of the project financing completely. At least a quarter of the total amount will be spent on creating new jobs in Turkey itself.

 We have just overseen the signing of a number of financial sector agreements. Russia’s Sberbank acquired DenizBank, Turkey’s ninth-biggest bank, in September this year, in a deal worth a total of $3.6 billion. This is one of the biggest deals, if not the biggest, in Europe’s banking sector over the last year.

 The Council also discussed humanitarian matters at today’s meeting. Our bilateral public forum is beginning its practical work now.

 As far as humanitarian issues go, education and science are both important areas. I spoke about the nuclear project before, and I want to note that more than 100 students from Turkey are studying in this particular field in Russia. In other words, if the project goes ahead — and so far it is going to schedule — it will help to create a whole new high-tech professional sector in Turkey.

 There is the tourism sector too. As the Prime Minister noted, 3.5 million Russian tourists visit Turkey every year, and the figure will be even higher this year. This is a sign of our trust in Turkey and its government, a sign of our confidence in your country’s stability. This is what you could call ‘voting with one’s feet’ in the good sense of the term.

 Russia & Turkey are neighbours and we share many common pages in history, sometimes dramatic pages. It is very important that we treat this heritage with respect.

We have gone through all manner of events in our history, but this is all part of the past now, and we must look toward the future. It makes me very happy to see that our Turkish friends share this view and that this is what we do.

Of course, as was mentioned too, we also discussed the international agenda, including the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Syria, and the situation in North Africa and the Middle East in general.

Let me conclude by once more thanking the Prime Minister and all of our Turkish friends for these very constructive and productive talks. We have agreed to hold the fourth meeting of High-Level Cooperation Council in Russia in 2013.

Thank you for your attention.