Putin to push trade in Turkey despite disagreement on Syria

reuters.com ^ | November 28, 2014 | Tulay Karadeniz and Gabriela Baczynska

[Tailgunner Joe]

Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Turkey on Monday will have trade and energy issues at its heart, but is not expected to bridge deep differences over Syria and Crimea.

The two issues have tested a relationship usually kept on track by mutual economic advantage: Russia is Turkey's main energy supplier, and Ankara is Moscow's second biggest trade partner after Germany.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has strongly criticized Russia's backing for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. And Turkey has strong links with the Muslim Tatar population of Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in March.

With Erdogan and Putin set to chair the fifth annual meeting of a council to improve trade and relations, several deals are expected to be signed, officials on both sides said.

State monopoly Rosatom, which is building Turkey's first nuclear plant, expected to be worth $20 billion, will continue pushing for "investor status", which would cut tax on profit to 2 percent from 20, Putin's top foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists on Friday.

Turkey's imminent ascension to the presidency of the G20 makes bilateral ties particularly important, Ushakov said, adding that Syria would be discussed in "great detail".

Talks on Turkey's troubled neighbor are unlikely to be more than an exchange of very differing views, according to Hasan Selim Ozertem, an analyst at Ankara-based think tank USAK.

Erdogan has become Assad's most vocal critic and has lambasted the United Nations Security Council, and Russia in particular, for stalling on an international response to the civil war in Syria, which has left nearly 200,000 dead.

"It seems that topics regarding strengthening energy and trade ties are richer this time," Ozertem said.

[Tailgunner Joe]

Defending Syria and the Assad regime is not really what matters to Putin. If it was, then he would be just as hostile to America's NATO ally Turkey as he is to us. No, what matters to Putin is doing everything he possibly can to hurt the USA everywhere in the world and defeat our national interests as much as possible. He will even sacrifice Russia's national interests as long as it hurts us. Putin's philosophy is pure unbridled Anti-Americanism. He is our most dangerous and deadly enemy in the world.

[g-ranch]

Yes you are right TJ. But Putin is tactically taking advantage of a grand opportunity to grow Russian global influence, because US leadership is terribly weak at the this moment in time, and the US military is bogged down in ME wars that benefit no American.

The episode about a year ago when Putin wrote a NY Times op-ed, as much as I did not like to admit Putin was correct. Senator DeMint’s response probably gave Putin to stay up even later every night figuring out a way to screw up America. Obama vs Putin is like Kaepernick vs Seahawks. Putin one-ups our golfer-in-chief at every juncture. It seems he’s got our number and wins every time.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/167987463/Letter-from-Jim-DeMint-to-President-Vladimir-Putin-on-American-Exceptionalism