Baku Asks Turkey to Get Involved in Responding to Falling Water Levels of Caspian Sea

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 28 – Rapidly falling water levels of the Caspian are forcing Azerbaijani ships to reduce the amount of cargo they carry by 50 percent, with Azerbaijani experts saying that they expect the sea’s level to continue to fall in the future and the problems arising from that to increase.

            As a result, Azerbaijan has asked Turkey to get involved in dealing with this problem, likely to dispatching more dredging barges or new ships with shallower drafts so that east-west trade across the Caspian will not collapse in the future (casp-geo.ru/v-baku-byut-trevogu-iz-za-snizheniya-urovnya-kaspiya/).

            Azerbaijan’s appeal was made by Rakhman Gummetov, the deputy minister for digital development and transportation at a meeting of the Azerbaijani-Turkish Investment Forum in Baku; and while it has not yet attracted widespread attention, it is likely to further exacerbate relations among the Caspian littoral states.

            That is because Russia, one of the five, has sought to keep all non-littoral states out of such operations; and if Ankara responds positively to Baku’s appeal and dispatches ships to deal with the increasingly shallow waters of the Caspian, then it appears likely that this will be another source of tension between Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation.