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Friday, October 30, 2015

Here's an example of how countries blackmail each other


Below the outcome of wannabe caliph Erdogan's tantrum when Russia sided with Assad. Erdogan threatened to withdraw from a previously signed agreement with Russia for building of a nuclear power station and that got Russia doing .......... just read the article below.
It looks like everybody has learnt a whole lot of stuff from the Italian mafia.


Zulfikar Dolgan writing at AlMonitor:
Russia puts brakes on Turkey's truck traffic
 

In September, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin together inaugurated the newly built Moscow Cathedral Mosque in central Moscow.

he two countries were already having serious disagreements on the Syrian crisis and the status of President Bashar al-Assad. But Turkey and Russia already had opposing views on Syria, Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula but had managed to keep their disputes away from their substantive economic relations. When Russia was faced with US and EU embargoes, it opened its markets to Turkish firms, especially in foodstuffs.

Russia, which is hosting the 2018 World Cup soccer tournament, continued building mega-facilities for the tournament and gave priority to Turkish contractors.

It was Putin’s clear support of the Syrian army and the Assad regime and attacks on the Islamic State (IS), but mostly against opposition groups deemed moderate by Turkey, that set off an era of mutual threats in Turkish-Russian and Erdogan-Putin ties. Erdogan bitterly criticized the Russian air attacks and violations of Turkish airspace and declared that he will not call on Putin anymore.

It was Erdogan who put their meticulously preserved relations on the agenda and made first reference to possible sanctions against Russia. He said Turkey can stop its natural gas purchases from Russia that supplies more than 55% of Turkey’s needs and award the building of the $20 billion Akkuyu nuclear power station to another, non-Russian contractor.

Russia did not heed Erdogan’s threats and counterattacked. Its first countermeasure was to stop issuing transit passage documents to Turkish trucks carrying Turkey’s exports to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Mongolia.

Turkish exports to the Middle East and the Gulf had already hit bottom when Turkish trucks lost transit routes because of clashes in Iraq and Syria. Now an annual $2 billion worth of exports to Central Asia is at risk with the Russian sanction.

In an announcement on its official.....

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