Turkey’s Plan To Sabotage Israeli Gas

Turkey: The Spoiler Nation

Turkey’s regional scheming and meddling everywhere from Cyprus and Syria to Libya is about one overriding thing: Israeli gas. 

If Israel, Greece and Cyprus make good on plans to build an underwater pipeline to carry Israel’s massive Levant Basin gas finds to Europe, then Turkey will lose any chance to make good on Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman dreams of regional power. 

That is why Turkey is meddling in Syria (which also has a chunk of the Levant Basin to explore), and why it’s stepped into the fire in Libya with the Government of National Accord (GNA), signing a new deal to carve up maritime borders to the detriment of Cyprus in the Mediterranean. It’s also why Erdogan is interfering in offshore drilling territory in Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). 

So, now, what to watch? Keep an eye on any bone thrown to the Israelis that would suggest an attempt to get a gas pipe deal that would render an expensive underwater pipeline to Cyprus and Greece irrelevant. 

Turkey (meaning, Erdogan) has made a collection of bad policy choices over the years, and those choices have essentially left it out of all the riches the Mediterranean has to offer. Erdogan has, on his own, backed the country into a corner. As a result, the number of key countries poised to gain from the oil and gas riches of the Mediterranean are leaving Turkey out of the equation. 

But from a completely pragmatic perspective, Israel could send its game-changing gas production to Turkey for cheaper than it can make this all happen with its more geopolitically reasonable cohorts in Greece and Cyprus.

As it stands right now, any Israeli-Turkish deal of this sort appears far from plausible, particularly considering that the two countries haven’t even had ambassadors for three years (both sides expelled them in 2017). It also doesn’t help that Turkey is bent on supporting the Palestinians and Hamas. 

Now that Turkey has signed its new maritime agreement with Libya, it could very well seek to do the same with Israel, which means putting pragmatism over hatred. What Turkey needs now is an EEZ agreement with Israel in the Mediterranean, and we think Erdogan will be willing to cater to Israel for that. And while there is no way Turkey will negotiate on any level with Cyprus, Erdogan has hinted that he would be willing to negotiate with Israel. That’s the first sign. He would cut virtually any deal with Israel in order to undermine Cyprus. For starters, it would mean some uncomfortable public statements suggesting a sizable downgrade of Turkey’s support for Hamas. That’s uncomfortable for Erdogan because it would make him look weak as a leader. Still, he has room (and, importantly, time) to maneuver on this because he won’t face elections until 2023. 

Turkey, under Erdogan, is all about smoke and mirrors. At least, that is the intention. In Syria, it’s gone beyond this and Erdogan has backed his own troops into a dangerous corner. They are now effectively tiny dogs yapping at the very large Syrian Army and its Russian guard dogs. Getting out of that will require some serious face-saving. In Libya, the situation is also smoke and mirrors, and Turkey has sent troops (many of which are Syrian ‘volunteers’) that won’t be winning any all-out wars. It’s for leverage, and it’s not working - so far. 

More Smoke and Mirrors with BP?

There’s quite a lot of smoke and mirrors elsewhere, too, particularly in the oil patch, where climate change is altering investor sentiment, which is, in turn, forcing oil and gas giants to consider whether their business models are going to be sustainable. 

On that front, the big news this week is giant BP’s public relations charm campaign that has it announcing its new goal to reduce total fossil-fuel emissions to net-zero by 2050 and to shift investment to renewables. 

The logic is that fossil-fuel giants have powered the world for 100 years and wish to continue powering it for another century, which means renewables. 

The announcement is intentionally vague because it is intended to simultaneously appease activist investors who want a transition to climate-friendly activities and skittish investors who would very much like to continue to get major returns from the company’s flagship oil and gas operations. 

The BP plan doesn’t offer up much by way of detail, nor is there any clear mention of actually scaling down fossil fuels production, leaving investors wondering whether this simply means that the company will do its best to offset its carbon footprint as it plows ahead with fossil fuels production increases and adds more renewables to its portfolio.