Hakkı Uygur, Vice Director of Center for Iranian Studies (İRAM Center) in Ankara told Mehr correspondent Morteza Karimi that Turkey will continue buying oil from Iran because it is unable to replace Iran oil with oil from other countries in the short term as a result of technical issues as the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu recently said.
Meanwhile, Uygur added that “but I think that the volume of oil purchased from Iran will be determined by the level of American pressure and the meetings between Turkey and the United States.”
Turkey’s purchase of S-400 missile defense from Russia, the Palestinian issue and the Eastern Mediterranean energy resources were cited as other sources of dispute between his country and the United States.
In response to a question regarding the reasons behind Turkey’s opposition to US’s oil sanctions on Iran, the İRAM Center vice director said that Turkey is concerned that the US sanctions will further destabilize the region as well as Iran, adding that the US administration’s Israeli-oriented approach will create other crises in the region.
In response to the question “what can Iran and Turkey jointly do tackle US sanctions?”, the Turkish expert said that if the two countries bring their stances closer to each other and take a closer approach towards issues such as Iraq and Syria, they will be able to form a regional coalition and also will be able to reduce the effects of the external threats.
Translated from Persian into English: Kamal Iranidoost
Your Comment