United World International author Mehmet Perinçek elaborated on the question whether “the US can target the TurkStream after the Nord Stream?” to the Russian newspaper Vzglyad. We present the article including Mehmet Perinçek’s comment, published in Russian, to our readers translated into English.
Gas pipelines running from Russia to Türkiye may repeat the fate of Nord Stream. Fears about this arose in the expert community of Türkiye after the American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh uncovered the case of explosions at the bottom of the Baltic Sea that occurred six months ago. The main suspect in the sabotage was the United States. Does the U.S. have a motive and the technical capabilities to attack the Turkish Stream?
The State Department issued a statement on Thursday. It claimed that the United States had nothing to do with undermining the Nord Stream and was ready to reiterate this at a meeting of the UN Security Council. When asked if the UN should play any role in investigating the incidents, State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the explosion occurred outside the United States and that the partners in the waters, where the explosion occurred, should talk about the investigation mechanisms, reported TASS.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin refrained from directly accusing the United States of involvement in the sabotage, but drew attention to something else: all the leading Western media were suddenly speechless after Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh last week described in detail the scheme to undermine the Nord Stream. According to Hersh, the crime was committed by the United States. Wang Wenbin called for an objective investigation into the undermining of the Nord Stream, RIA Novosti reports. Russia has already qualified gas pipeline explosions as an act of international terror.
Meanwhile, Hersh’s revelations raised fears in expert circles for the fate of the Black Sea counterpart of the lost pipeline – the TurkStream. If the United States turned out to be the main suspect, then the motive of the criminals becomes clear – to cut off the supply of Russian blue fuel to Western Europe. Therefore, it would be logical to “finish what you started.”
By the way, the load on the Black Sea route has recently increased. Since the beginning of February, Gazprom has increased supplies to Europe, as a result of which the TurkStream has overtaken Ukrainian transit in terms of volume, Eadaily reported. Experts attribute the increase in supplies to the cooling in Europe and the price of Russian gas, which is pegged to stock quotes.
It was against this background that fears for the fate of the Turkish Stream were heard among experts. Mehmet Perinçek recalls how the United States and Ukraine agreed four years ago to coordinate efforts to stop the construction of the second line of the TurkStream.
“The protocol on this occasion was signed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, who visited Washington in November 2018. The text of this agreement is easy to find on the State Department website. As you can see, at that moment Ukraine did not value relations with Türkiye too much if it openly acted to the detriment of our interests. It is logical to assume that Kyiv and Washington have preserved such a goal to this day. In the early years, they tried to slow down the “stream” with purely political tools, but recently they switched to violent methods. As it was already reported, last autumn the terrorists of the Kyiv regime tried to blow up the pipeline that leads to Türkiye”, Perinçek notes.
“The Americans are using the Ukrainian crisis not only against Russia, but also against Europe. They want to deprive Europe of Russian gas and thus increase its dependence on America. Now they sell their gas across the ocean, which is quite more expensive than Russian. The volume is smaller, the price is higher and the logistics are more difficult. But the European Union still buys”, says the professor perplexed.
Perinçek does not rule out that a terrorist attack will take place in the near future, either against the Turkish Stream or against the Blue Stream, a smaller pipeline that has also pumped gas from Russia to Türkiye since 2003. “Such an attack in its effect can be compared with the bombing of Ankara. Ankara will defend its interests in any case. Moreover, now the whole world is suffering from an energy crisis, and Türkiye cannot afford to lose such a resource as these precious gas pipelines”, the political scientist notes.