EU, Turkey play up energy to keep accession lights on
ISTANBUL – The European Union and Turkey are spotlighting their strategic energy cooperation in a bid to keep the lights on in Ankara’s troubled bid for EU membership. They staged a high-level conference this week to underline the sprawling candidate state’s growing importance as an energy bridge between Europe, the Middle East and the Caspian basin. At a time when the election of new French President Nicolas Sarkozy, adamantly opposed to Turkish EU entry, has deepened doubts over Ankara’s chances of joining the 27-nation bloc, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn pointed to energy as one key reason to keep the negotiations going. «This was a very significant signal of the shared strategic interests between the EU and Turkey, and of the continuation of the accession process,» Rehn told Reuters on the flight home. Energy Minister Hilmi Guler pointed proudly at a map with flashing pipelines – some existing, some under construction and others still on the drawing board – criss-crossing Turkey on their way to keep the lights on in Europe. Turkey, he said, was becoming Europe’s vital fourth energy corridor, diversifying its sources of supply to balance the flow of oil and gas from Russia, North Africa and the North Sea. The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline came on stream last year, pumping 1 million barrels of Azerbaijani oil a day to the Mediterranean, loosening Russia’s stranglehold on Caspian export routes. The planned Nabucco pipeline would pump gas from Iran, Iraq, the Caspian and possibly Russia via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Austria. EU projections show that despite ambitious goals for energy efficiency and renewable fuels, the bloc will be increasingly dependent on imported hydrocarbons, especially from Russia. With relations between Brussels and Moscow strained by a range of disputes, and deep unease in Europe over Russian gas monopoly Gazprom’s grasp on pipelines and supplies, the case for embracing Turkey might seem overwhelming. But things are not that simple. For one thing, the EU can and does import oil and gas via Turkey without admitting it as a member. None of Europe’s other energy suppliers is a candidate. Nor can a Turko-skeptical West European public necessarily be convinced to take in the poor, secular but mainly Muslim country of 74 million because of its geostrategic importance as an energy hub on the hinge of Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Indeed, a film projected at the conference showing Istanbul’s Bosporus strait suspension bridge with the slogan «step into another continent» appeared unwittingly to recall Sarkozy’s contention that Turkey is not European. Disputes over Cyprus have already slowed Turkey’s accession talks. Domestic tension between the military and a government accused by critics of a hidden Islamist agenda also raised questions about Turkey’s European credentials. Energy community The EU is pressing Turkey to become a full member of the European Energy Community, which creates a secure legal framework for investment, competition and regulation. But Ankara is stalling, partly because it is wary of uncoupling energy cooperation from its EU accession process, but also because it fears that as a non-EU member it will not be treated as an equal partner in the Energy Community. Guler made clear Turkey had ambitions to be more than a mere «transit country» and hoped to leverage its location to become a gas supplier in its own right. EU officials are skeptical. Diplomats said the Turks insisted on deleting mention of an «energy partnership» in a joint statement at the conference. The «P-word» has become poison because Sarkozy wants the EU to offer Ankara «privileged partnership» instead of full membership. Guler said Turkey needed a transition period to make major investments in its fast-growing energy sector before it signed up to the Energy Community treaty. A Turkish official said Ankara sought guarantees of an equal role in decision making and dispute settlement, and would not face de facto dictates from Brussels. It also wants a decade’s grace from EU greenhouse gas curbs and emissions trading. EU officials and Turkish and European industrialists argued it was in Turkey’s interest to join the Energy Community now to secure an estimated -100 billion in investment needed to meet its booming economy’s energy needs in the next decade. The Turkish industry federation Tusiad criticized the government for going slow on privatization and liberalization of the energy sector and warned of worsening power shortages unless there was more private and foreign investment. In a light-hearted speech as delegates cruised along the Bosporus after the energy conference, Rehn praised the Turkish government for turning more lights on the country’s historical monuments. Although he stressed his neutrality in Turkey’s July 22 general election, the ruling Justice and Development Party’s electoral symbol just happens to be a light bulb.
