Turkey touts gas, trade deals ahead of Erdogan-Trump summit
The flurry of agreements comes as the Turkish leader looks to press the US president on fighter jets and Kurdish policy in Thursday's meeting.
Turkey is carrying transactional diplomacy to new highs in advance of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s meeting with President Donald Trump in the White House on Thursday, with new deals announced almost every day. At least some of the agreements are sweeteners aimed at securing NATO member Turkey’s reentry into the F-35 stealth fighter jet program, alongside other Turkish asks, notably concerning US support for the Kurds in Syria, observers say.
Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar confirmed via X on Tuesday that Turkey’s state-owned gas company, Botas, will from 2026 onward import around 4 billion cubic meters per year of US-produced LNG for domestic use as well as for onward sales to Europe and North Africa. Botas General Manager Abdulvahit Fidan and New York energy trader Mercuria President Daniel Jaeggi signed the 18-year supply contract, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
The amount corresponds to roughly 8% of Turkey’s annual gas needs. Bayraktar said that Botas had inked a separate memorandum with Australia’s Woodside Energy Group Ltd. to import a further 5.8 billion cubic meters of gas from the Louisiana LNG export project starting in 2030.
“The Erdogan-Trump summit is best understood as a transactional encounter,” Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of Teneo, a London-based risk consultancy said in a research note to clients this week. Erdogan’s last visit to the White House was in November 2019 during Trump’s first term. Erdogan cancelled a planned meeting with former President Joe Biden scheduled in May 2024 amid rumors that he was seeking to curry favor with Trump. The Brookings Institution’s Asli Aydintasbas described the Turkish leader’s return to the White House as a “victory lap" in commentary earlier this week.
