Turkey set to retaliate against Russian trade restrictions
Posted by meb at August 30th, 2008
Foreign Trade Minister Kürşad Tüzmen announced on Friday that Turkey will begin implementing reciprocal measures on Monday in response to a recent increase in security measures leveled by Russia against Turkish exporters.
Speaking to the press after he received Iraqi Planning and Development Minister Ali Baban and a delegate of Iraqi officials in Ankara, Tüzmen said the obstacles against Turkish trucks attempting to pass through Russian borders were completely against World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements. “These hindrances fall under the definition of ‘trade barriers,’ which are strictly forbidden by international agreements,” he said.
Russia placed Turkey in the category of countries at high risk for illegal trade activities a month ago. This move was assessed by many as a Russian precaution against rising imports and a widening current account deficit. Russia says lengthy inspections of trucks from NATO-member Turkey, which coincide with tensions between Moscow and the military alliance over the Caucasus, where Russia this month fought a short war with Georgia, are due to a new customs law.
Russia is a very important trade partner for Turkey, with a total annual trade volume of $38 billion between the two countries, and has close political relations with common strategic interests, especially in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Unlike its Western allies, Turkey has refrained from strong condemnations of Russia’s actions since the outbreak of a brief war between Russia and Georgia earlier this month, fearing such language could hurt its vital economic ties with Russia. But Russia has denounced a US and NATO naval presence in the Black Sea, which can only be accessed via the Turkish Straits, as a “provocation”.
Turkey depends on Russian energy supplies, but it is also a transit route for Russian energy exports, Tüzmen said. Turkish businesses are concerned that they could lose a total of $3 billion in the short term if the delays at border crossings continue.
Russia, Turkey’s main supplier of natural gas, is the biggest market for Turkey’s construction firms and millions of Russian tourists visit Turkey’s Mediterranean coast every year.
Turkey has recently been under heavy pressure from its NATO allies to set a clearer stance against Russian aggression. Wolfango Piccoli, an analyst at the global political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday that Turkey’s reluctance to set a clear position was due to similar pressure from Russia. “Turkey is again a frontline state like in the Cold War, but the difference now is that its dependency on Russia is much bigger,” he explained.
Tüzmen said Turkey and Russia are connected to each other and that they both have to be careful in protecting mutual relations. “What I really wish is for both sides to reach a compromise quickly,” he noted. The measures package will be open, gradual and progressive, the minister explained and underlined: “We had previously warned them that if we feel harassed, we will harass them, as well.” Asked whether Turkey will put limits on its energy imports from Russia, the minister avoided going into details and said, “I believe that explanation is enough for today.”
It is not just Turkey that is suffering from Russia’s toughening trade stance. A recent example was that 19 US poultry producers will be barred from exporting their products there — a move that would deprive them access to a key market. On Thursday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told CNN that these US poultry producers had ignored warnings from Russian inspectors last year. Although he said the move had nothing to do with tension over the recent war in Georgia and was purely economic, analysts have grounds for suspicions given that Russia has accused the US of orchestrating the Georgian move against South Ossetia.
Following indications that the US may take economic steps to punish Russia for its military action in Georgia, US business groups grew uneasy. They are urging the White House to proceed cautiously. “We made a real effort to find out [what measures may be taken] and they were entirely uncommunicative,” said Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents US exporters such as Boeing, Microsoft and General Electric. “But I came away with a very clear impression that something is going to happen, that doing nothing is not a choice here,” Reinsch said to Reuters in an interview on Thursday. “We’ve been telling them to think very carefully before acting and move very cautiously and whatever you do, make sure that it’s multilateral, not unilateral,” Reinsch said.
EU shies away from sanctions on Russia
The European Union will not impose sanctions against Russia at Monday’s emergency summit on the Georgia crisis, backing away from an economic confrontation with its largest energy supplier, officials said on Friday. Moscow has for days taunted the 27-nation EU over its failure to match tough verbal condemnations of Russia’s intervention in breakaway South Ossetia with action, arguing that any breakdown in relations would hurt Europe more.
EU leaders are instead due to state that ties with Russia are under observation and emphasise their readiness to help Georgia with reconstruction, to offer Tbilisi a free-trade deal and ease visa restrictions on its citizens. “At the current stage, we do not expect any sanctions to be decided by the European Council,” a senior French diplomat, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters ahead of the half-day summit in Brussels.
It remained unclear, however, whether a second round of negotiations on a wide-ranging new partnership between the EU and Russia would go ahead as planned on Sept. 15-16, with some countries saying it made sense to postpone the talks. Yet with a solid core of states including France, Germany and Italy resisting sanctions, even previous backers of a tougher line such as the ex-Soviet Baltic states, Poland and Britain were softening their tone for the sake of EU unity.
“We should not be looking for ways to punish Russia,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Petras Vaitiekunas told reporters in Vilnius. “The most important thing is to have a unified EU position, as the conflict is obviously not going to end soon,” said Vaitiekunas, who only last week insisted Russia should face consequences for its actions.
The EU depends on Russia for about a third of its oil and gas, with individual countries even more tied to its supplies. European diplomats said they had received signals from the Kremlin that Russia would retaliate if the EU imposed punitive measures, but Moscow denied a British report that it was prepared to restrict oil supplies in the event of sanctions.
Western states have accused Russia of using excessive force with a massive counterattack that stubbed out Georgia’s attempt to take back breakaway South Ossetia three weeks ago.
Brushing off Western condemnations of its move this week to recognise the rebel South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday said talk of EU sanctions on Russia was the product of a “sick imagination.”
Possible sanctions had included the EU scaling back existing low-level negotiations with Moscow on areas of cooperation, withdrawing support for Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation, and tightening visa rules for Russian travellers. But diplomats said those ideas had fallen by the wayside and instead leaders would seek to draft a strong warning that future EU-Russia relations depended on Moscow’s actions.
Latvia’s Foreign Minister Maris Riekstinsh told Reuters his country favoured suspending talks on the EU-Russia partnership, which is due to encompass trade, energy and political ties.
In Warsaw, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a news conference there should be a review of whether an EU-Russia summit with President Dmitry Medvedev set for November in the French Riviera city of Nice should go ahead.
A statement from Monday’s emergency summit is also expected to reaffirm that Russia should fully implement a French-brokered peace plan and respect Georgia’s territorial integrity.
EU planners have been charged to draw up a mandate for a numerically limited civilian monitoring mission, a French presidency official said, stressing that there were no plans to send armed EU peacekeepers for now.
source: Today’s Zaman
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