Turkey: media, close agreement with Putin for gas discount
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is close to getting a discount on the price of Russian gas from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Turkish president, returning from the Balkans last Friday, had expressed the hope that “events would evolve positively” and that his citizens “would not have problems for the winter”.
However, the imminence of the agreement was relaunched by the Turkish media today, according to which it is decisive for the purpose of a large discount on the price of gas. it will be the meeting between Putin and Erdogan in Samarkand, expected at the end of the month within the Shanghai Cooperation organization.
Crucial for Erdogan was the establishment of an agreement with the Kremlin which envisages a payment system exclusively in Turkish lira and in Russian rubles. The Turkish president has been forced in this direction by the economic crisis afflicting Turkey and by the fact that 40% of the gas that satisfies Turkey’s needs is imported from Russia, and Turkey has an agreement that provides for supplies for 4 years. , even if the price is being renegotiated and has never been disclosed, not even initially. The two leaders have already met twice since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, on July 19 in Tehran and on August 5 in Sochi, a Russian town on the Black Sea, confirming their willingness to continue and develop relations between the two countries in the tourism, commercial, economic and energy fields, despite the ongoing conflict and the sanctions affecting Moscow, which Ankara has never considered applying.
However, it is the payment system that is the key to the deal. In the recent past, Russia and China had tried to find an alternative payment system to the dollar in order to avoid the payment circuits that enforce sanctions.
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