Russia and Turkey sign gas deal, seek common ground on Syria as ties warm

Turkey and Russia signed an agreement on Monday for the construction of a major undersea gas pipeline and vowed to seek common ground on the war in Syria, accelerating a normalization in ties nearly a year after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan hosted Russia's Vladimir Putin at an Ottoman-era villa in Istanbul for talks which touched on energy deals, trade and tourism ties, defense and the conflict in Syria, where the two leaders back opposing sides.

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Russia has backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with a year-long air campaign against the rebels fighting him. Turkey backs the rebels and wants to see Assad out of power.
SOURCE

Some people believe that Russia and Turkey are supposedly two of the parties fighting over a potential gas pipeline in Syria. Many things about the situation in Syria make me believe the fighting is over a lot more than just a gas pipeline (if that's even a factor).

While the deal described in the article above is a fairly common type of thing, it still boggles my mind. Russia is trying to defeat the rebels in Syria that Turkey supports, but they're willing to become even stronger business partners with them on the side. I suppose they're thinking long-time while the problems in Syria are just short-term?

It makes me sick how nations can be civil and fair about trade sometimes and so inhumane about it other times.

Russia's gas interests in the Middle East has always been to stop any gas pipelines from the ME to Europe.

Gazprom is the major gas supplier to Europe.

Looks like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel and Iran get 2nd fiddle.

a reply to: Profusion

This link to a speech Putin gave is worth checking out .

Our common task is to ensure that all people in the world have access to modern energy sources. I would like to remind you that there are still two billion people in the world who do not have such access. We must remove the energy barriers on the road to universal economic growth and development. We must ensure that people in even the poorest countries have access to the basic blessings of civilisation such as electricity, light and heating. We cannot ignore that the situation on global energy markets, especially on the hydrocarbons market, has undergone serious change over recent years. Oil prices fell by more than half and some even said that the hydrocarbon era was heading for decline and that we should shift the focus entirely to alternative energy sources now. I think that there are no real grounds for such far-reaching conclusions yet, not for now at least.

jfmxl.sdf.org...

Looks like the price of oil is going to start going up ...