Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu addresses the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, ADA, in Baku, Azerbaijan, Friday Dec. 4, 2015.
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“Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline – TANAP can be launched sooner than it was initially scheduled”, said Mr. Ahmet Davutoğlu, Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey, at a joint press conference with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, on December 3.
The premier stressed that Turkey did nothing but applied the rules of engagement by exercising its legitimate right to self-defense against an unidentified plane that entered the Turkish airspace.
The Russian measures against Turkey following the Su-24 incident are aimed at preventing the spillover of terrorist threats from Turkey into Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.
It was not Turkey but Russian Federation who stopped preparation for the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project, the country’s President said on Saturday.
He suggested for the first time, however, that the plane was brought down because Turkey could not “morally” allow the plane to trespass on Turkish territory before bombing Turkmen areas in Syria.
“No one can blame Turkey, no one can expect an apology from Turkey”, Mr Davutoglu said in the speech, which was televised on Turkish television.
But Turkey’s insufficient storage capacity and the heavy dependence of its business on regular natural gas mean any boost in LNG imports would only partially make up for lost Russian gas, according to Turkish think-tank TEPAV. The militants shot and killed the downed plane’s pilot while he was descending on a parachute and also killed a Russian marine involved in rescuing the co-pilot.
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Both sides have squabbled furiously over whether the jet breached Turkey’s air space.
