Established a year ago in the wake of the demise of the Soviet empire, Sukru Elekdag's brainchild, the 11-nation Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), constitutes a potentially vast market of 300 million people rich in natural resources which is likely to become a key transit point for tri-continental trade between Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
That is if the BSEC countries - Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria and Albania - can either resolve the region's multiple conflicts or neutralize existing antagonisms through increased trade and economic inter-dependence.
This is a tall order for an area seemingly at war with itself where the list of disputes includes five years of armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, tension between Russia and almost all BSEC states which once belonged to the Soviet Union, perpetual turmoil in the Russian-controlled part of the northern Caucasus, civil war in Georgia, historical animosity between Turkey and Armenia which have yet to establish diplomatic relations and habitual Greek distrust of Turkey.
It is also no small fete for a region which needs vast amounts of international financial support for infrastructural and other projects that will get its changing economies jump-started.
Yet, the BSEC coupled with the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) which groups Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and the five formerly Soviet Central Asian states - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirgizistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan - is an attempt by Turkey to ensure that potential conflict between the region's major powers - Turkey, Russia and Iran - can be contained through enhanced trade relations.
Locked into a replay of last century's Great Game, a struggle between Russia and Britain for regional hegemony, the regional powers are each vying for predominance in an area stretching from the Balkans to China. Russia recently raised the stakes by warning Central Asian nations that they could not belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the ECO at the same time.
Speaking in his tastefully decorated apartment in a posh Istanbul neighborhood shortly after BSEC foreign ministers agreed to establish a secretariat in the city that will be the pact's driving force, former Turkish ambassador to the United States Sukru Elekdag, who was laughed out the door in 1989 when he first proposed creating a Black Sea free trade zone, brushes aside the apparent obstacles to increased cooperation in the troubled Black Sea region.
Noting that it took the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) seven years to create a secretariat, Mr. Elekdag, who now represents United Technologies, insists that there is a genuine political will to increase trade and reduce impediments like tiresome visa requirements and cumbersome regulations.
"The BSEC is an open-ended cooperation in which unanimity is not a pre-requisite. Its goals are far more modest than those of the European Community. The BSEC will be judged by its ability to develop trade," Mr. Elekdag says.
His optimism is shared not only by Turkish officials and businessmen eager to establish their country as a predominant political and economic force in the region but also by representatives of the international financial community.
"These people can only resolve their problems by assisting each other and bidding for projects collectively. The Black Sea region could become an important power and a significant market," says Khosrow Zamani, International Finance Corporation's Turkey representative.
"The BSEC is building all the necessary institutions. It may take time, but they have the political will. There is a need for regional cooperation and we can already see projects on the horizon," adds Joachim Jahnke, director general of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
While the BSEC member states have decided to establish a $l.4 billion trade and development bank as the backbone of their burgeoning cooperation, they have yet to agree where to base it.
Greece, Turkey, Rumania and Bulgaria, which has succeeded Turkey as BSEC chairman for the coming six months, are all vying to host the bank. Greece has already asked the EC to contribute to the bank's funding.
Encouraged by a series of proposals involving oil and gas pipelines, the linking of power grids, energy sharing and conservation, port and infrastructure development as well as telecommunications put forward by the Black Sea Businessmen's Council, which were endorsed by the Black Sea foreign ministers, the EBRD is attaching a consultant to the BSEC's Istanbul secretariat tasked with helping to generate projects.
The Black Sea businessmen also called for a reduction of tariff barriers and customs duties in addition to the abolition of import and export quotas.
"The final target is a kind of European Community. The question is what stages are needed to reach that goal," says Nihat Gokyigit, a prominent Turkish businessman who heads the Black Sea Businessmen's Council.
"The Black Sea is likely to prove to be more important than the Turkic republics of the former Soviet Union because of its geographic proximity and economic similarity," adds Erturk Deger, one of the few businessmen to pioneer infrastructure development of the region. He notes that with the loss of Baltic ports, Russia is focusing much of its resources for infrastructure development on its own Black Sea ports.
A U.S. educated engineer who fathered RCA's application of computer techniques to the production of consumer electronics, Mr. Deger is turning the Rumanian Danube port of Galati into a trans-shipment point for petrochemicals.
"This will give us access to all refineries in the former Soviet Union and allow us to handle cargoes of up to 5,000 tons. Some traffic will shift from Rotterdam to the Black Sea. It will be FOB Rumania instead of FOB Rotterdam," says Mr. Deger, whose company, Deger Enterprises AS, accounts for 62 percent of the former Soviet Union's flat glass exports, 13 percent of its copper exports and four percent of its oil exports.
Similarly, Mr. Deger is looking at building a $275 million container port near Istanbul which would receive vessels from the United States and the Far East and service Russia, Rumania and Bulgaria through feeder lines.
In many ways, Mr. Deger has become the modern Black Sea businessman. "He addresses the issue of foreign trade logically. After all the bottom line of generating foreign exchange is trade," says the IFC's Mr. Zamani who recently entered into preliminary discussions with Mr. Deger over possible cooperation.
Across town in an office near the Pera Palace Hotel where Agatha Christie once wrote her Orient Express, Prof. Celik Kurdoglu, director of the Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK) and a prime motor of Turkish commercial expansion, argues that development of transportation infrastructure is the key to Black Sea growth.
Holding up Mr. Deger's Galati project as an example, Prof. Kurdoglu says DEIK is studying which Black Sea ports can be privatized the quickest. "Transportation is of the greatest importance. Without being able to move the goods, nothing moves," he says.
Like most Turks, Prof. Kurdoglu soft-pedals Turkish regional ambitions, emphasizing that the BSEC is merely a vehicle to promote trade. Yet, he waxes almost lyrically as he argues that Turkey rather than Iran is the only nation in the region capable of promoting peace and stability.
Drawing Turkey's place on the map with neighbors like Iraq, Iran and Syria in addition to the Black Sea countries, Prof. Kurdoglu sighs. "We can't choose our neighbors. It takes hard work to create an El Dorado, but someone has to do it," he says.
Feeling rejected by the European Community in its efforts to become a member, Turkey employs trade as a vehicle to promote regional peace and stability and spin a web of new relationships with itself at the center.
"God closes one door and soon thereafter another one opens. Europe closed the door on Turkey, but the doors to the north and the east have opened. Turkey is becoming the world's door to Russia, the Ukraine and other former Soviet republics," says Ishak Alaton, chairman of Alarko Holding SA.
Back in his apartment with its carpets and artful glasswork, BSEC father Mr. Elekdag argues that the demise of communism allows Turkey for the first time in almost 50 years to take full advantage of its geopolitical assets.
"After all," he says, "Turkey is as much a European and Middle Eastern country as a Balkan, Black Sea, Caucasian, Asian and Mediterranean country."
Yet, containing Russian-Turkish rivalry for regional predominance and the multiple areas of friction between Turkey and Russia - including Russia's perceived failure to seriously contribute to the resolution of conflicts in the Caucasus, its empathy with Serbia and its arms sales to Iran-is the key to Turkish policy.
Says Mr. Elekdag: "This is it. Trust and cooperation is the issue. If the United States has a grand strategy it is securing the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. With the enormous oil reserves in Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, the West can enhance its oil security by creating an alternative to the Gulf. Turkey is the key. To utilize it, the United States has to persuade Russia to be more sensitive to regional conflict."
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