Ankara may stop buying Russian gas and look to meet its energy needs elsewhere if Russia carries on violating Turkish air space in its bid to prop up the regime in Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned yesterday.“We can’t accept the current situation. Russia’s explanations on the air space violations are not convincing,” he said.
His remarks come hard on the heels of Gazprom’s announcement that it plans to halve the capacity of the TurkStream pipeline in favour of Nord Stream 2 and would appear to cast further doubt on the project as a whole.
Moscow immediately attempted to defuse the situation, saying that the violation of Turkey’s airspace was accidental and that it valued its relationship with Ankara.
“We traditionally highly appreciate our bilateral relations with Turkey and we sincerely hope that these relations will continue to develop further in accordance with the plans outlined by [Russian] President Putin and [Turkish] President Erdogan,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said to reporters in Moscow.
Russia is currently Turkey’s largest natural gas supplier and provides it with 60% of its annual intake of 50bn m3 of natural gas.
If Turkey’s relationship with Russia were to deteriorate to the point of no return, Erdogan would presumably look to Azerbaijan for alternative supplies of energy.
Russian violation of Turkish air space jeopardises TurkStream
Source: Gazeta