Erdogan: Turkey will be a natural gas hub
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that he had agreed with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to form a natural gas hub in Turkey.
"Turkey will be a hub for natural gas as well. In our last meeting, we agreed with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin on this issue. We will create a hub here with Turkish gas coming from Russia," Erdogan said speaking to members of his AKP in parliament.
"And in his own words, Putin announced to the world that 'Europe can get its natural gas from Turkey'," Erdogan added.
Last week, on the sidelines of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia summit in the Kazakh capital Astana, Putin proposed building a natural gas hub in Turkey.
After the meeting, "For such a distribution center, of course, Thrace is seen as the most important place for this business,” Erdogan said, referring to a region in northwestern Turkey near the Greek border.
State-of-the-art mine technology
Erdogan also continued to praise the mine technology in Amasra as state-of-the-art, where an explosion claimed 41 lives on Friday.
“In line with the regulations in the legislation, we have made improvements in 50 different areas in Amasra as well as in other quarries,” he said.
“We do not yet know how the explosion occurred in our coal mine despite all the precautions and systems. We will be able to learn this after our institutions and experts complete their work. Until the definitive report on the explosion comes out, everything said will remain speculation,” Erdogan said.
However, he repeated his faith in destiny, saying "We will surrender to the destiny and the fate of our Lord."
Election challenge to Kilicdaroglu
Turkish President also challenged main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu to run his candidacy at the next year’s presidential elections against him.
“I want to make an open call to Kilicdaroglu. If you are so sure of yourself, so sure of the correctness of your style of politics, if you want to take responsibility for the future of the country, challenge yourself! If you can afford it, if you have the heart, if you can act with your own free will, come out and let's compete with our experiences and projects,” Erdogan said.
