With Turkey in the club, Europe can forge a fresh engagement with Islam - by Madeleine Bunting
At the end of this week there will be a ceremony in the southeastern Turkish port of Ceyhan to mark the first tanker to be loaded with the oil that has been piped over a thousand kilometres from Baku in Azerbaijan. One of the most ambitious and controversial energy schemes in the world is finally coming to completion. It will transport the oil wealth of central Asia to hungry world markets, bypassing the increasingly capricious Russia.
And this huge pipeline, whose course runs through zones of chronic political and seismic instability across the Caucasus, is only the beginning of how Turkey is exploiting its old strategic and geographic advantages to develop a web of pipelines for oil and gas, stretching from Asia into the heart of Europe. Plans for a gas pipeline across Turkey, under the Aegean to Greece and eventually to Italy, are well advanced. The reserves of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan will soon be linked to energy-hungry Europe. Turkey is offering Europe a cornucopia of dazzling possibilities as the pipelines are laid and the economy booms. Not surprising then that the Turkish and western European political and economic elites feasting at last week's Forum Istanbul - the Turkish equivalent of the Davos World Economic Forum - are chorusing heartily from the same hymn sheet. It was a lovefest as participants got giddy on the dream of a utopian future in which Muslims and secularists happily co-exist, ancient enmities between Christian and Muslim are reconciled, and Turkey pioneers a way forward beyond "clash of civilisations" simplicities.
No comments:
Post a Comment