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2.7 Politics - misc
A 7-magnitude earthquake hit Izmir, causing no significant economic costs.
On November 23, German forces that are part of an EU military mission that enforces a UN arms embargo on Libya boarded and attempted to search a Turkish cargo ship.
Armenian PM agreed a deal to e nd the Karabakh war after rapid Azerbaijani advance. Protesters stormed government buildings in Yerevan.
Iran and Russia were up to an agreement to recognize Azerbaijan’s gains in the region.
Elshad Nassirov, vice-president of Azerbaijan’s national energy company SOCAR, was quoted by Reuters on November 5 as saying a $5bn extension of the Southern Gas Corridor (SCG) network would be ready this month to take up to 10bn cubic metres a year from the giant Shah Deniz gas field in the Caspian Sea to Europe.
The Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), a part of SCG, runs from the Turkish-Greek border through Greece and Albania and across the seabed of the Adriatic Sea before making landfall in Italy.
BP, which leads the international consortium developing Shah Deniz, said last month that it was looking to strengthen security at its facilities in Azerbaijan after claims of attacks on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan part of the SGC route that runs from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia.
Shah Deniz is expected to reach peak output in 2023, around the time that TAP would also hit full capacity.
Turkey on November 13 slammed a report by the UN Human Rights Council accusing Ankara of recruiting men from its local allies in Syria to fight for Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Iran ‘hopes foreign militants involved in the Karabakh war have gone home’.
Ukraine is reportedly forming a joint venture company with Turkey to domestically produce as many as 48 of the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 combat drones that lately helped give Azerbaijan a decisive edge in the six-week Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
2.8 Polls and sociology
A survey has shown 54% of Turkish CFOs expect revenues to return to pre-pandemic levels after Q2 2021. It was conducted by Deloitte’s for Autumn 2020.
A quarter of Turks prefer to keep their savings in gold and FX under the mattress, according to the Turkey Saving Trends Survey for Q3 by ING Turkey. That’s been the most popular saving instrument among Turks for centuries.
Turks don’t trust the Turkish state nor the system, which the Turkish state has been a part of since 1980.
21 TURKEY Country Report December 2020 www.intellinews.com
