Siberia said:
Mr.Cyan said:
Indeed, the cancelling of the South Stream and the Turkish gas deal is a game changer.
Bloomberg reported a couple of days ago:
Ukraine’s plan to diminish its energy dependence on Russia is adrift in the Bosporus Strait.
The nation, which gets half its gas from Russia, wants to build a liquefied natural gas terminal on the Black Sea and held talks with Cheniere Energy Inc. (LNG) to import U.S. cargoes. The only path to the terminal is through Istanbul’s 17-mile waterway.
Turkey doesn’t allow LNG shipments through the Bosporus because of safety concerns and congestion. The strait is about half a mile wide at its narrowest point and classified as a maritime chokepoint, among the most difficult to navigate.
Also,
Erdogan gave most interesting speech yesterday:
During his Dec. 6 speech, Erdoğan also touched on last year's nationwide anti-government Gezi Park protests, saying they could have evolved into "an uprising" if the government had not taken the steps to stop them.
“What would have happened if the Gezi events were not taken under control and [the government] had surrendered to street violence? The answer to this question has been given in Egypt and Ukraine," he said.
The president also said the Turkish police had behaved "gently" to protesters compared to police the U.S., whose killings of civilians have triggered massive anger.
“They put people down and kill them by hitting their heads to the ground, leaving them breathless. [The victims] did not hold a gun or fire bombs. Did our police kill citizens or point a gun at them? Shouldn’t the police defend themselves to avoid being killed?” he asked.
Erdoğan again referred to the “parallel structure” of the movement of U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, which he accuses of plotting to topple the government, saying that it has "worked against the police defending themselves."
Very interesting development.
Just for information, the "parallel structure"; Fethullah Gülen movement has been Erdogan's and his party AKP's main partner since 1990's in political islam implementation in Turkey and they remained partners after they took over the Turkish government with the big support of US and Western Europe in 2002. They had been acting together from 2002 until 2012. Under the instructions of US&NATO they carried out together the fake, staged lawsuits, such as 'Ergenekon' and 'Balyoz' against anti-imperialistic, anti-American elements, members of Turkish army, press, intellectuals etc [with the help of some wittingly and unwittingly neo-liberals of Turkey].
Meanwhile they (Erdogan's AKP and Gulen sect) were sharing a multi hundred billions of corruption cake in Turkey.
After 2012 their interests and benefits conflicted with each other and Erdogan made a move against them and started a war. And after that, on December 17th 2013, the members of broad Gulen network nested in juridical circles and police department started operations about huge corruptions of Erdogan and his party's members, they also released approx. a hundred phone recordings of multi-billion corruption from Erdogan and his closest party members.
Not surprisingly Erdogan denied all of the accusations and they claimed the phone-recordings were audio-montage (lol) and illegal. And after that they their main partner, the Gülen sect/movement has become the "parallel structure", an enemy of the state.
Erdogan is one of the most psychopathic political figures that I've seen. He is up against the wall, because he commited serious crimes (aside from huge corruptions he is responsible of many deaths in Turkey and Syria) and Turkish economy is heading to a disaster, so in his mind getting close to Russia is buying some time until 2015 elections.
But also a rapprochement of Russia and Turkey could be the result of the historical conjuncture more effective than Erdogan's or Putin's will behind the scenes. Turkey-Russia-Iran have been both rivals and partners depending on conjunctural situation for hundreds of years in the region.
