Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in January 2020 to inaugurate a new natural gas pipeline that will transport Russian gas into Turkey and Europe. Construction of the TurkStream Pipeline began in 2017 and travels under the Black Sea. It will carry 31.5 billion cubic meters of gas into Turkey, with half of that ultimately flowing further into the Balkans as well as to Bulgaria and Hungary. The TurkStream Pipeline is part of Moscow’s larger plan to reduce their transport of gas through Ukraine.
Completion of the pipeline occurred in spite of United States sanctions on firms working on the TurkStream, which it imposed in December 2019 out of concern over Russia’s growing domination of European energy markets.
The meeting between the two leaders and, more broadly, their cooperation on the TurkStream Pipeline and other energy-related projects mark a drastic improvement in the relationship between the two countries, who support opposing sides in the conflicts in Syria and Libya. In the past few years, this has led to disagreements between Moscow and Ankara, but these tensions appear to be thawing, at least temporarily.
