Azernews.Az

The government’s approach to the recent dispute over the price of gas purchased from Russian energy giant Gazprom, followed by the termination of the Turkey-Russia Western Pipeline agreement, has raised doubts, as the government is looking at different sources of natural gas, as well as ways to take advantage of its current location in order to become a natural gas transfer hub, observers argue, Todays Zaman reported.

Turkey currently has natural gas purchase deals with countries such as Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan, as well as liquefied natural gas (LNG) deals with Nigeria and Algeria. Turkey’s plans for the future include buying natural gas from Turkmenistan, Iraq and Egypt. The country plans to store the natural gas from these countries until it can become a supply center for energy-hungry Europe via Southern Gas Corridor pipeline projects such as Nabucco and Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI), which will lower Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.

Such maneuvers, analysts agree, will help increase Turkey’s strategic importance. The Nabucco and ITGI pipelines are very important to Turkey for many reasons. For one, they will help Turkey and the European Union break the ice that formed due to the EU’s controversial delay of Turkey’s membership. It will prove that Turkey, which has been accused of getting overly close to the East at the expense of the West, is still a strong ally of the West.

The pipeline will also help improve relations with the US by lessening Russia’s influence in the region. Turkey reportedly expects to gain US support to be part of the natural gas and oil exploration process by Israel and Greece in the eastern Mediterranean, which Turkey also has rights to through the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ (KKTC) presence in the area. Although Greek Cyprus is part of the EU and the KKTC is not recognized by any nation other than Turkey, it is expected that Turkey will defend the KKTC’s rights in the east Mediterranean. In the meantime, Turkey hopes these pipelines will decrease terrorist attacks from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which gets most of its financial support from