TURKEY’S DREAMS OF BEING ENERGY HUB STRENGTHENED BY
PKK NEGOTIATIONS?
While the western media remains
largely fixated on the existential IRAN nuclear threat and the gory slow-motion
SYRIAN civil war, other momentous events are occurring in the world’s most
volatile region, with potentially enormous consequences for the west’s
addiction to MIDDLE EASTERN oil. One of the most brutal Middle East
insurgencies, largely overlooked by the Western media, involved TURKEY and the KURDISH
separatist Partiya Karkeren KURDISTAN (Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK).
Background Information:
KURDISH EQUATION
The TURKISH government, led by
Islamist Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is apparently considering
negotiations with jailed PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan. Ankara’s outreach
initiative has enormous energy implications, as TURKEY currently imports 90
percent of its energy supplies and many pipelines run through TURKEY’S eastern KURDISH
regions, a tempting target which KURDISH militants have attacked in the past,
while TURKEY is also seeking to develop itself as a major energy transmission
hub for EUROPEAN markets.
Background Information:
KURDISH
MARCH TOWARD AUTONOMY GAINS MOMENTUM
Ocalan was captured in Nairobi, KENYA
on 15 February 1999 and extradited to TURKEY. The PKK leader was sentenced to
death under Article 125 of the TURKISH Penal Code, which was later commuted to life
imprisonment when TURKEY abolished the death penalty in support of its bid to
join the EUROPEAN UNION. Despite his imprisonment Ocalan remains visible,
having published several books from prison, as recently as 2011 and apparently is
still the titular head of the PKK, despite his imprisonment.
Background Information:
TURKEY'S
GAMBLE ON KURDISTAN OIL
Despite Ocalan’s removal from the
scene, the PKK continued their attacks in TURKEY. In their most notable
success, on 5 August 2008 the PKK attacked the $3.6 billion, one million barrel
per day, 1,092-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which traverses 669
miles of TURKISH territory to ship AZERI Caspian oil to TURKEY’S MEDITERRANEAN
Ceyhan port, nearly all of which contains significant KURDISH populations. An
international consortium constructed the BTC pipeline, which began operations
in May 2005, transiting high-quality crude from AZERBAIJAN'S offshore
Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields to TURKEY'S deepwater MEDITERRANEAN terminus at
Ceyhan.
DICK CHENEY, THEN HALLIBURTON CEO, REMARKED, "I CAN'T
THINK OF A TIME WHEN WE'VE HAD A REGION EMERGE AS SUDDENLY TO BECOME AS
STRATEGICALLY SIGNIFICANT AS THE CASPIAN."
An explosion devastated the BTC
pipeline segment at TURKEY’S Yurtbasi village; after Ankara was notified,
valves 29 and 31 were closed as officials waited for the oil contained in the
4-mile segment of No. 30 terminal to burn out. BTC operator BP declared force
majeure. When BTC resumed operations 20 days later, AZERBAIJAN had been blocked
from shipping approximately 17 million barrels of crude and the US Department
of Energy estimated that AZERBAIJAN'S final cost for the lost shipments was
more than $1 billion.
The PKK subsequently claimed
responsibility for the attack. As the BTC represents the West’s sole outlet for
Caspian energy, the stakes were enormous. More than a decade ago Vice President
Dick Cheney, then Halliburton CEO, remarked, "I can't think of a time when
we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as
the Caspian."
Background Information:
TURKEY
WILL TAKE MILITARY ACTION IF THE SYRIAN KURDS MAKE MOVES TOWARD AUTONOMY &
TURKEY – SYRIA - WATER DISPUTE (1989)
Now?
 |
| Oil Pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey running through Kurdish areas |
TURKEY SEEKS TO DRAW FROM BRITISH EXPERIENCE IN ENDING ITS
TROUBLES WITH THE IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY
According to recent media reports TURKEY,
as always absorbing Western experience, has sent a diplomatic team to the UK to
see if BRITAIN’S experience in ending its “troubles” with the IRISH Republican
Army has relevance for TURKEY’S traumas with the PKK. Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams,
leader of the political branch of the IRA, has told reporters that Sinn Fein's
executive committee is advising a joint TURKISH-KURDISH
team visiting London, Belfast and Dublin to learn methodology and psychology
that led to negotiations breakthrough in favor of the Good Friday agreement in
1998.
Ayla Akat, a Kurdish MP who took
part in the discussions said, "Although there are historical differences
between NORTHERN IRELAND and TURKEY, it was very important. I learned a lot.”
From his imprisonment on Imrali
island in the Sea of Marmara, Ocalan posted a 20 page letter with his
conditions in a “three stage plan, which included,
1 – the withdrawal of PKK forces
from northern IRAQ, from where they have mounted attacks into TURKEY;
2 – creating an infrastructure for
talks with Ankara via a Parliamentary “truth commission” and
3 – a period of “normalization,”
whereby PKK
elements based in northern IRAQ who have not committed crimes can return to
their families.
Amidst the chaos and bloodshed of
the MIDDLE EAST, the fact that an Islamic government is seeking a peaceful
resolution to a conflict that has killed more than 50,000 TURKISH citizens is a
unique opportunity that both Washington and Brussels should grasp with both
hands. Given the increasingly significant amounts of oil and natural gas that
traverse TURKEY, they would be stupid not to do so.
By. John C.K. Daly via Oilprice
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