Foreign Policy quotes Global Energy Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Brenda Shaffer on the development of a gas pipeline that would deliver gas from Israel to Turkey, and what that could mean for Turkey and Russia’s relations:
“I think the reconciliation was a long time in the making, and security cooperation between the two sides had already deepened over the last year,” said Brenda Shaffer, a Georgetown University expert on eastern Mediterranean nations. She said the detente is “about politics and security, not gas” — although Turkey is also happy to quench its energy needs from sources other than Russia, given Ankara’s ratcheting tensions with Moscow over the last month.
“Ankara has an interest now in showing the Russians it has other options to get natural gas,” Shaffer said.