Global Post: Pipeline talks put Turkey at center stage - by Nichole Sobecki

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Pipeline talks put Turkey at center stage - by Nichole Sobecki

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to Brussels last week, his first since Turkey began negotiations to join the European Union in 2005, threw the spotlight on an issue given fresh impetus by the recent gas crisis between Russia and Ukraine: the Nabucco pipeline project. Nabucco, symbolically named for Giuseppe Verdi's 1842 operatic masterpiece that became a rallying cry for a generation of Italians determined to fight off Austrian military occupation, promises a different kind of freedom — that of energy independence from Russia. Erdogan's visit, amid the distractions of the U.S. presidential inauguration, served to remind all parties to a summit beginning this week that Nabucco could become a key sticking point in negotiations over EU accession, which Erdogan described as a "top priority" for Turkey.

If construction on Nabucco begins next year, as currently envisaged, the new pipeline could be operational by 2013. Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Project at Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the advantages for European countries, and for Turkey, are "undeniable." "Europeans need the gas, and linked to that, they want to break away from the Russian monopoly," he said. "There is gas in and around the Caspian, and Turkey wants to be the key conduit in the transportation of this gas to Europe."