{"id":62696,"date":"2013-01-11T13:56:34","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T11:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=62696"},"modified":"2023-04-06T15:00:08","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T12:00:08","slug":"turkey-israel-tensions-set-back-turkish-energy-interests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/01\/11\/turkey-israel-tensions-set-back-turkish-energy-interests\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey-Israel Tensions Set Back Turkish Energy Interests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tulin Daloglu for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse. posted on January 10<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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\"General<\/p>\n

A general view of Ambarli gas-fired power station, idled in a supply dispute with Ukraine, in Istanbul, Jan. 8, 2009. (photo by REUTERS\/Osman Orsal)<\/p>\n

Surrounded by 70% of the world\u2019s oil and natural gas reserves, Turkey is almost completely dependent on imports to meet its needs for hydrocarbon energy. Despite this hard reality, Turkey\u2019s Minister of Energy Taner Yildiz said, \u201cWe aim to have a Turkey in 2023 that won\u2019t import oil or natural gas,” and, “We will also continue our work turning Turkey into an energy hub.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As Al-Monitor<\/em> Turkey Pulse has reported here, and here, the discovery of hydrocarbon reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean basin not only caught the Turkish leadership unprepared, it also revealed the shortsightedness of their approach of designating Israel as an enemy. When Turkey and Israel engaged in dialogue on building an \u201cinfrastructure corridor\u201d linking port cities of these two countries, which would have included five separate underwater pipelines for oil, natural gas, electricity, water and communications, they were also seeking to cement a strategic partnership. While anyone who can repair the personal and political rupture between Prime Minister Erdogan and the Israeli leadership will deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, the fact is that the loss of Turkey as a partner isn’t really all that damaging for Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were talking about the infrastructure corridor, it was 2005 and later 2007,\u201d Binyamin Fuad Ben Eli Ezer, former Israeli minister of infrastructure told Al-Monitor<\/em>. \u201cI tried to find a way to buy gas from Gazprom, Russia, as quick as possible. Today, we don\u2019t need that. The new discoveries in Leviathan and Tamar will be good for us for at least 300 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leviathan and Tamar are newly discovered huge gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel.\u00a0 Israel certainly has the full sovereignty to explore and exploit these fields. The issue that brings Turkey into the equation is more about the way the natural gas will be brought to surface and carried to international markets for consumption. Ben Eli Ezer, who was the founding father of the idea of the \u201cinfrastructure corridor,\u201d also sheds some light on this dilemma.<\/p>\n

\u201cErdogan blessed it. I went with all the maps and the work we\u2019ve done and we found that it is more than possible to do it by these underwater pipelines. It\u2019s an economic one, good one, too,\u201d Ben Eli Ezer said. \u201cIf you ask me something happened with Calik. He came to Israel eight or nine times. Both [Ehud] Olmert and [Ariel] Sharon were more than happy about this project from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

A giant company with diversified interests from energy to media, \u00c7alik Holding was tasked with preparing a feasibility report by the Erdogan government. Chief Executive Officer Ahmet \u00c7alik is also known as a close friend of Erdogan. \u201c\u00c7alik kept it at ‘wait and see.’ Then the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident happened, and everything blew up,\u201d Ben Eli Ezer said. That still leaves room to speculate as to whether this \u201cinfrastructure corridor\u201d between Turkey and Israel that was going to build pipelines under the deep waters of the Mediterranean was really doable. It\u2019s not really the distance that matters, but the engineering that this project requires is certainly a challenging one.<\/p>\n

Ben Eli Ezer, however, thinks that if people put their minds to it, the project is still possible and that he would prefer to do it with Turkey and normalize relations with the Ankara government.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to make a statement,\u201d Ben Eli Ezer told Al-Monitor. \u201cThe government of Israel, the prime minister of Israel \u2014 as far as I know, he\u2019s more than interested to bring back normalization of the relation with Turkey. He\u2019s keen to find the formula that will satisfy both sides.\u201d He then went on to say this: \u201cYou see, there is two almost super nations that we have to consider in the Middle East \u2014 Turkey and Egypt. We have border with Egypt, which makes it more important for us. But we also don\u2019t need Turkey on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the Erdogan-Davutoglu policy is crystal clear on using Israel as a whipping boy at every opportunity. So far, this approach has won them the masses on the Arab street. Erdogan continues to claim that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is the mother of all problems in the region, as if the reason people in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria put their lives on the line to bring down dictators had anything to do with Israel\u2019s unresolved dispute with the Palestinians. Israeli officials have expressed privately many times that under these circumstances, it’s not possible to trust Turkey anymore. \u201cIt takes years to build trust, and takes only minutes to dissolve it,\u201d one senior Israeli official told\u00a0\u2014<\/em>\u00a0Although Ben Eli Ezer expressed a desire, despite all these challenges, to rejuvenate the \u201cinfrastructure project,\u201d he also said, \u201cBut I don\u2019t see how.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, a Turkey in fights with all the countries in the region rich with oil and natural gas reserves only harms its own long-term interests \u2014 and undermines the goals that Turkey\u2019s Energy Minister Taner Yildiz has set: \u201cWe aim to have a Turkey in 2023 that won\u2019t import oil or natural gas,\u201d and \u201cWe also continue our work turning Turkey into an energy hub.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tulin Daloglu is a columnist for <\/em>Al-Monitor and a foreign-policy analyst based in Ankara, Turkey. She tweets @TulinDaloglu.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more: https:\/\/www.al-monitor.com\/originals\/2013\/01\/israel-turkey-tensions-energy.html#ixzz2HfQDvEUG<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tulin Daloglu for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse. posted on January 10. A general view of Ambarli gas-fired power station, idled in a supply dispute with Ukraine, in Istanbul, Jan. 8, 2009. (photo by REUTERS\/Osman Orsal) Surrounded by 70% of the world\u2019s oil and natural gas reserves, Turkey is almost completely dependent on imports to meet its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":62697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[176],"class_list":["post-62696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}