On oil, Turkey has two priorities: the Bosphorus transit issue, and Ceyhan's role as an export hub:

• re Bosphorus, the goal is to get Russia to reduce the number of oil tankers that cross the straits and go right through the city of Istambul. The Montreux Convention protets Russia's right to use the straits, and it's cheaper than building alternative routes (mainly land-based pipelines that bypass the straits, either by going just around them (within the European bit of Turkey, or via Bulgaria and Greece), or by going across Turkey to the Mediteranean). So imposing alternative rules requires a voluntary commitment by Russian exporters to use the new routes (and pay for it, in order to fund construction), is a trade-off agaisnt somethign else of interest to Russia;

• re Ceyhan, its role is now well established, given its position as the end point of the BTC pipeline from Azerbaijan, filled right now by the (BP-run) ACG field near Baku, and later by some or all the oil from Kashagan. It also gets oil from Iraq and might get more. It makes sense to use it, as it can berth much larger tankers than the Black Sea ports, and is close to the large Southern Europe market.

On gas, Turkey needs to find supplies for its fast growing domestic demand (fuelled by its power sector), and would like, indeed, to act as a transit hub for gas from Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and, later, Iraq or Turkmenistan, if a way is ever found to make these happen:

• its demand is growing fast (although not as fast as some optimistic predictions), and Russia has largely won the race to supply that market when it built Blue Stream in addition to the existing Balkan route: Russia has the capacity to supply more than all the local demand and will easily build up the capacity to do more (doubling Blue Stream, for instance);

• its hub role bumps against the desire of customers to buy gas directly from suppliers, and not from Turkey - but being a transit country, while having strategic value, is much less profitable than beign a hub, whereby one buys from various suppliers and then becoems a seller of its own.

• as noted, it gets large chunks of its supply from the West, so any East to West pipeline will bump against the natural swap that can be done, which would imply more Russian gas going to Europe and other sources going to Turkey, no exactly what's being mooted...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes