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Erdogan says stopping Iran imports ‘impossible’, urges against blame
miDDle east
TURKISH President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week that it was impossible for Turkey to stopbuyingoilandnaturalgasfromIrandespite the threat of US sanctions.
He made the comments to broadcaster NTV on September 27 during a flight home from a visit to New York for the UN General Assembly and added that trade between Turkey and Iran would continue.
Speaking to reporters on the flight, Erdogan reportedly said Turkey was not afraid of possible US sanctions over its trade with Iran. He added that Ankara did not want to drop its co-opera- tion with Tehran.
Bloomberg, meanwhile, reported that after failing to nail down a meeting with US President Donald Trump during his trip to the US, Erdo- gan was signalling that Turkey would go ahead with an incursion into Syria.
Erdogan wants to set up a “safe zone” along the border where millions of refugees currently in Turkey could be hosted, and which would help curb the threat of US-backed Kurdish militia, which Ankara regards as a “terrorist” and insur- gent threat.
The US is supposed to be working jointly and closely with Turkey on setting up the safe zone but Erdogan has previously expressed frustration at the slow pace in achieving objectives.
Erdogan told NTV: “Scheduled efforts are underway. As the schedule is moving along, all our preparations along the border are also complete.
“Upon returning [to Turkey], we will hold
evaluations ... on what sort of steps to take and implement them ... because Turkey is not a countrythatcanbestalled.”
Urging caution
The Turkish president, whose geopolitical strat- egy involves maintaining a challenging set of alli- ances with the US, Russia and Iran, has difficult relations with the Saudis, particularly since the killing of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate by a hit squad of agents sent from Riyadh in October last year.
He has therefore urged caution over rushing to blame Tehran for the September 14 attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities. The US, major Euro- pean powers and Saudi Arabia have all blamed the attacks on Iran, while the latter insists it was the Houthi group fighting Saudi-backed forces in the Yemen civil war that had staged the strikes.
“I don’t think it would be the right thing to blame Iran,” Erdogan said in an interview with Fox News broadcast on September 25. He added that the attacks had come from several parts of Yemen.
“If we just place the entire burden on Iran, it won’t be the right way to go. Because the evi- dence available does not necessarily point to that fact,” Erdogan added.
The attack on the heartland of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry damaged the world’s biggest petro- leum-processing facility and knocked out more than 5% of global oil supply and half of Saudi oil production capacity.
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 39 03•October•2019
