Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Russia's Georgia War and


Soner Cagaptay
Radikal
August 25, 2008


Turkey and the United States have long wanted to export gas and oil from the Caspian through Georgia. As a first step, Ankara and Washington built the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil and gas pipelines running from Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey and the Mediterranean. The next step in the shared Turkish-U.S. energy vision would have been to extend the BTC east to the oil and gas fields of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and then west to Europe, thus providing the West a real alternative to Russia's energy domination. But by causing instability in Georgia, and breaking the physical link between Turkey and the Caspian basin, Russia's occupation of Georgia has made the extension of the BTC a remote possibility; at this stage, no energy company is willing to invest. Consequently, as Soner Cagaptay argues in this Turkish language op-ed, Turkey's hopes of becoming an entrepot for Caspian energy fields are dwindling, while Russia continues to establish its monopoly over the region's energy fields at the expense of Turkish and U.S. interests.

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