Russia and Turkey! The rules of the game

As anyone hardly foresaw how sharp would be the decline in the relationship between Russia and Turkey last fall, as now very few people could have imagined that hope for improvement would be right now. Together with the possible political warming the project of Turkish Stream, which last year was supplanted by its rival Nord Stream-2 as from the plans of Gazprom, as from the agenda of the Kremlin's foreign policy, may be resumed. And then we will get an interesting situation.

Turkish Stream is much better prepared - the whole infrastructure for the first line for 16 billion cubic meters has already been built, and the pipe laying under the Black Sea can take as little as a year. Claims, fair and not very fair, to the economic efficiency of the project lost all meaning: as the Kommersant’s interlocutors note, "money has already been buried," so any option of using this infrastructure will be better than not using it at all. Nord Stream-2 will be ready only in 2019 and it still has to overcome many political obstacles. And the first line of Turkish Stream only requires a permit of Turkey, to which gas will go via the pipe. Thus, if the political relations really improve, then the construction of one line to Turkey looks very likely.