Rosbalt, 04/03/2004, 10:03

Russia and Turkey: Plenty to Talk About

Yana Amelina, Rosbalt, Moscow

Abdullah Gul, who is both Turkey's deputy prime minister and its minister of foreign affairs, was in Moscow last week, the first such visit at the foreign ministerial level in eight years. The four-day visit was replete with activity: Gul met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, lectured at the Diplomatic Academy and attended a dinner, organized by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, that brought together representatives of Russian business. It is difficult, nonetheless, to call the results of the visit impressive: the main problems in Russian-Turkish relations appear to remain unresolved.

Still, at the official level, there was every sign of mutual understanding. In the corridors of power, the talk was about strengthening and widening Russian-Turkish cooperation, raising it, as the president of Russia said, to the level 'of a many-sided partnership.' As Vladimir Putin said when he greeted Gul, Russia is pleased with how its relations with Turkey are developing. 'With the accession to power of Prime Minister Erdogan and your party, our relations have become firm, including over such sensitive issues as the battle against terrorism,' the president declared.

'Russia and Turkey have discovered each other anew,' Abdullah Gul said. 'Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, the Russian Federation is now stable, and the rule of law is paramount. Turkey, too, now has a strong, stable government. The leaders of both countries are seeking the further strengthening of our relations,' Gul said with Eastern elegance at the press conference on the results of the visit.

Certainly, a positive element in Russian-Turkish relations is the 15%-20% annual growth in trade between the two countries, which now amounts to approximately USD 6.5 billion a year. When to that amount is added income from tourism and from the so-called 'shuttle' trade, the total comes to about USD 12 billion a year. And the sides have agreed to raise the annual official total to USD 10 billion.

Already, Vladimir Putin noted, Russia trails only German as Turkey's top trading partner. For his part, Gul noted that Russian entrepreneurs have been active in the privatization of Turkish companies-specifically, Tatneft, which won a tender for Turkey's largest petrochemical company, which is Europe's fourth largest and Turkey's most profitable company. Russian capital's triumphant march in Turkey looks likely to continue.

Although, as Gul said, Russia and Turkey have similar approaches to many questions, it is obvious that the discussion of some questions found the sides far from agreement on essentials. One of the main problems worrying Moscow and Ankara is the struggle against international terrorism, 'one of the most pressing matters facing the international community,' said Gul. Actual agreements by the sides remained out of sight ('they are discussing joint actions'), while Russia, as Aleksandr Alekseyev, who heads the Third European Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, had promised on the eve of the visit by Gul, planned to ask Turkey about the presence on its territory of groups with ties to Chechen separatists.

Expressing himself as befits a diplomat, Alekseyev was extremely cautious at a briefing before the arrival of the Turkish foreign minister, stating that the government of Turkey has taken steps to end the activity of many such organizations out of a desire to avoid incidents harmful to Russian interests. At one point, it may be noted, Akhmed Zakayev, a representative of the so-called president of Ichkeria, Aslan Maskhadov, lived in Turkey.

A few days earlier, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov made a very much tougher statement at a conference on security in Munich. He said the presence in Chechnya of Turkish 'philanthropic organizations' was casting a shadow over Turkish-Russian relations. Most of the mercenaries killed by Russian federal forces in Chechnya turn out to be Turkish citizens, Ivanov asserted. 'Such incidents, inevitably, have a bad effect on the development of relations with Turkey, which is a member of NATO and part of the international anti-terrorist coalition,' the defense minister said.

Gul responded in some detail. He said Moscow had supplied the Turks with 'a list of Turkish citizens involved in terrorist activity' and that the list would be thoroughly studied by the appropriate agencies. He acknowledged that some of the fighters killed in Chechnya might be Turkish citizens and declared: 'Terrorist acts have occurred in Istanbul, and their perpetrators also hold Turkish passports.' He said that as for funds collected for humanitarian purposes in Chechnya they are handled through the office in Turkey of the Red Crescent. 'We always condemn acts of terrorism against innocent people,' Gul asserted. 'Be assured that Turkey is making every effort to prevent acts of terrorism.'

At his press conference, Gul, in answer to a question from Rosbalt as to whether the sides had discussed the activity in Russia of representatives of the People's Congress of Kurdistan (formerly known as the Kurdish Workers Party and then as the Congress of Freedom and Democracy of Kurdistan), said Turkey had 'openly declared and demanded' of Russia that this organization be listed as a terrorist group. 'The Russian side promised to study the question,' the minister said.

This clearly is a matter that upsets Turkey. 'As early as 1994, the Turks demanded that the Russian government ban the International Union of Kurdish Social Organizations, accusing us of terrorism, from registering in the Commonwealth of Independent States,' Rosbalt was told in Moscow's Kurd House. 'But we, Russian citizens who obey the laws of the Russian Federation, have made it our goal to preserve and develop Kurdish culture, which is surely no secret from the relevant governmental organizations. All the charges made by Ankara against our members and representatives in Russia are inventions, and Russia's police agencies don't take them seriously.'

As for the activity in Russia of the followers of the pan-Islamic, pan-Turkic Nurdzhular organization, which is banned in Turkey and that the Federal Security Service says carries out 'a wide variety of intelligence-service-related tasks' (not Russia's intelligence services, naturally), and about which Rosbalt has written at length, this problem, Gul said, did not come up during the negotiations. 'In any case, there was no discussion of Turkish special services,' he said. It was revealing that it was questions about Kurdish groups and Nurdzhular that took the Turkish minister aback. He had to turn to Turkey's ambassador to Russia, Kurtulush Tashkent, standing beside him, for help before answering.

The sticking point for Russian-Turkish relations remains the problem of the restrictions imposed by Turkey on the passage of tankers carrying Russian and Kazakhstan oil to the world market through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits. 'The question of the Straits was fully and very frankly discussed,' Gul said. 'The Russian side expressed its concern and laid out the problems that have arisen.'

However, the sides did not reach agreement on this, he said. Gul said Turkey had no intention of preventing the passage of Russian vessels through the Straits: 'This has never been the case and will never be the case,' he said. The whole thing, he said, comes down to the dimensions of the Bosphorus area. The economy is growing very rapidly. Last year 8,000 ships sailed through the Straits compared to 4,000 in 1996, and they carried some 150 million tonnes of cargo. Meanwhile, he said, some 15 million people live on the shores of the Bosphorus. 'We must in some way manage the ship traffic through the Straits,' Turkey's deputy prime minister explained. 'Limits are set to ensure the regular and safe movement of shipping.'

However, the true reason for the 'semi-closing' of the Bosphorus is not concern for the ecology and inhabitants of the region but the Turkish authorities' attempt to force Russia's oil companies and the governments of the Caspian region to end the movement of 'black gold' by tankers and, instead, into the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which is now being built and that will bypass Russian territory. In the view of independent analysts, oil from Azerbaijan is hardly enough to fill the requirements of the new 'line,' whose chief sponsor is the United States. That shift from tankers would resolve the political and economic objectives of the pipeline. In that light, Moscow could hardly expect concessions on the matter from Washington's principal regional spokesman.

The possible role of a Turkish construction firm, Kochak Unshaab, in the roof collapse at Moscow's Transvaal aquapark hardly looks insignificant against this background. With the investigation of that tragedy continuing, nothing has been proved against the Turkish firm. The Turkish side is 'extremely pleased that the Russian authorities are proceeding to investigate the causes of this tragedy coolly and objectively,' Gul said.

Of particular interest in this connection was the recent statement by Nikolai Maslov, deputy chairman of Russia's State Construction Committee (on February 15 the State Construction Committee withdrew Kochak Inshaab's license). Maslov said Turkish firms had been excluded from all international associations of builders and managers of water parks. 'They are not allowed to build in a single country of the world, nor to provide technological equipment or parts for such projects. The Turks immediately offer a dumping-style price, so low as to make quality work impossible. They have different standards, different technologies, their buildings are like matchstick constructions. . . . That is why they cannot be allowed to do complex building projects.'

Certainly, whether the Turkish builders are at fault and to what degree must still be determined by the experts looking into the reasons for the collapse, by the police investigators and by the courts, but this opinion of a professional surely offers food for thought. . . .

Translated by Howard Goldfinger

http://www.rosbaltnews.com/2004/03/17/65912.html