After the cancellation of the South Stream natural gas pipeline last December due to the EU’s blockage of the project, Russia announced an alternative project called the Turkish Stream which will hit the shore on the European side of Turkey near Kıyıköy.

Oil prices suffered their biggest selloff in five months on Monday, falling as much as 8 percent as Greece's rejection of debt bailout terms and China's stock market woes set off a deepening spiral of losses.

Turkey remains reluctant to enter the EU Energy Community, as it would decrease its leeway on its energy policies. European laws can suit some other neighbours, but Turkey is a completely different case. Its importance for Europe, in the energy sector or in relation to migration issues, should not be underestimated.

Russia's Gazprom plans to start building a pipeline to Turkey this month to get gas to Europe without going through Ukraine, company sources said, although it has no firm agreement with Ankara and faces opposition from the European Union.

Russian energy company Gazprom has made it clear that it intends to move forward with the construction of the Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline as quickly as possible, whether or not the project can overcome political obstacles in Europe.

The United States, wading into the international efforts to shape Greece’s economic and geopolitical orientation, is pushing the leftist government in Athens to resist Russia’s energy overtures.

Last December Moscow took Europe by surprise with an announcement that South Stream, a 63 billion cubic metre (bcm) pipeline designed to bring Russian natural gas to southern Europe across the Black Sea would be scrapped and replaced with a pipeline of similar capacity that would cross Turkey and stop at its border with Greece.

The sixth meeting of the World Forum on Energy Regulation is scheduled to be held on May 25–28, in Istanbul, and is being organized by the office of the prime minister of the Turkish Republic. The competitive and dynamically expanding nature of the energy sector in Eurasia has been boosting Turkey’s regional importance as it prepares to take on the role of a strategically important transit and energy hub country

Turkey's relationship with Russia is changing significantly. A domestic economic crisis, low energy prices and European energy diversification efforts have weakened Russia.

On March 16, the presidents of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia travelled to Kars in Turkey’s mountainous northeast, and then to a remote worksite near the border with Georgia, to launch construction of the 1,850km Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (Tanap).