Turkey-Israel Relations and

the Ceyhan-Ashkelon Oil

Route

Iakovos Alhadeff

The most important reason Obama wanted Turkey and Israel to normalize their relations,

was the Baku-Ceyhan and the Ashkelon-Eilat pipelines.

For the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline see wikipedia

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku%E2%80%93Tbilisi%E2%80%93Ceyhan_pipeline

 and for Ashkelon-Eilat pipeline see wikipedia

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Israel_pipeline

 The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is the only oil pipeline that the Americans have managed to

construct so far, in order to send Caspian Sea oil to the Mediterranean Sea, following the

route Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey.

 The Ashkelon-Eilat pipeline is an Israeli pipeline, that crosses Israel from the

Mediterranean Sea to Israel’s Eilat Port, the only port that gives Israel access to the Red

Sea, the Indian Ocean and South Asia.

 To make a long story short, the Americans can send Caspian oil to the Mediterranean

Sea with the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, and they can send oil to South Asia with the

Ashkelon-Eilat pipeline, bypassing Iran and China, but also Afghanistan’s war zone,

since the Americans did not manage to find a working solution in Afghanistan after many

years of war. Also note that a significant part of the oil transportation takes place through

pipelines, which keeps transportation costs low.

The route Ceyhan-Ashkelon is already in use, however it is important for Israel and

Turkey to normalize their relations in order to ensure the safe transportation of oil. Syria

and Lebanon, which are located between Turkey and Israel, are Iran’s very close allies,

and they are actually controlled to a certain degree by Iran. Both Assad, the Syrian

dictator, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, are very close to Iran. Moreover, Russia has a naval

base in the Syrian port of Tartus.

 Therefore tensions between Turkey and Israel, in what is already a war zone, is not

good news for the safety of the Ceyhan-Ashkelon route, which is basically the Baku-

South Asia bypassing Iran-Afghanistan and China route.