BY MAHIR KAYNAK
STAR- The dependence in energy has been one of the most important issues on the agenda recently. While Europe wants to commission the Nabucco pipeline in order to decrease its dependence on Russia in natural gas, Russia responds to this move with the South Stream pipeline project. Meanwhile, Turkey's participation in these two projects is considered inconsistent. Firstly the issue should be discussed within the general framework and following questions should be answered: Do the countries find a solution to their problems one by one, or an unexpected result occurs in the process of solving them? Do they firstly make a decision on the result, make political calculations and a solution to each problem is sought in accordance to this? So firstly Europe's place and function in the world is determined and then the projects to fulfill this determination are implemented. Furthermore, this determination isn't the product of only one force, but by the forces which give a direction to the world.
There's a difference of method at this point. According to general tendency, the work which is carried out is discussed as part of itself and a result which hasn't calculated before occurs. On the contrary, I think firstly a decision is made on results and then the actions leading to this result are carried out. I might be mistaken about the predetermined goals, but it doesn't mean that this method isn't right.
I define the goal this way: Russia and the US don't want a new power force to give a direction to the world. Besides their longing for maintaining their own hegemony, this situation is the result of their consensus about preventing the disasters to be caused by great conflicts. This is against the consideration that the US and Russia have been hostile to each other, but this hostility doesn't have to be a genetic hostility like the one between a cat and a dog. In other words, the friendship of these two countries is as natural as closeness between the US and Europe. This balance which was held in the post World War II era has actually prevented a war, but everybody thinks there is great hostility between them. Today these two forces have a tendency towards controlling new focuses of power which will newly emerge, gathering together the world around two poles that they will establish and keeping the competition among them. They think that the energy and food will determine the upcoming era and want to control access roads leading to these new focuses of power.
I believe that the use of natural gas will continue for heating purposes, but technological progress will be supported and economic infrastructure will be prepared so that new energy sources are used instead of oil. This situation doesn't mean that the oil will be left uncontrolled, but it might be necessary to control it so that it doesn't become a rival of the new energy. It might be necessary to decrease the oil supply towards this end and regional wars might break out. Turkey is just in the middle of these calculations and its interests are unimportant, compared to its responsibilities. I'm not saying that we shouldn't look after our interests, but our interests shouldn't be in the foreground. If we fulfill our responsibilities, we would gain a great many interests that we can't even dream about. We only need to broaden our horizon towards this end.