Turkey, Cyprus and the Nabucco pipeline

EU is dependent on external energy, and the recent row between Russia and Ukraine showed just how much! Knowing about this dependency the Russians have been apt at playing the energy card as a political item, something that has obviously annoyed Europeans, who are now trying to diversify away from Russian energy: "let us start to get our energy from other places than Russia!"
Europe already receives important energy deliveries from Norway and from North Africa (Algeria, Libya and Egypt), and for the latter in particular, there is hope and expectations to increase much more.
Also Central Asia and the Middle East are hoped to become a major source of EU energy, with the huge potential in places like Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran, and even Irak.
Part of this plan, is in fact to build pipelines that deliver oil and gas to Europe, that go around Russia. One of these projects is the so-called Nabucco pipeline, which intends to connect existing pipelines from the Caspian Sea and the Middle East, via Turkey all the way to Austria.
The bulk of the pipelines will go through Turkey.

Turkey, who obviously has an all-important strategic position in relation to the construction of the pepeline has now apparently decided to follow Russia and other countries using their energy-leverage with the EU: on a recent visit by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to the European Commission to the European Commission in Brussels, the construction of the pipeline was discussed, with Turkey introducing the question of the pipeline as leverage in the ongoing negotiations on EU accession (which are, to be fair, at a VERY early stage). Also, there has even been talk that Turkey could use the Nabucco-card as leverage on relations with Cyprus.

As it seems, this issue will not progress further as the EU-Turkish relations are much closer than many would apaprently think. However, all this does point to a much more problematic issue for the EU: the increased dependence on energy is a huge vulnerability, especially as more and more countries that is some way have some leverage on EU energy needs (either as direct suppliers or transit hubs) will use this "power" to get concessions from the EU. It is a modern form of black-mail, and the EU is very susceptible to it. At the same time, many countries that are suppliers of energy are not democracies, but have regimes with great propensity towards taking advantage of this situation.

Europe has a sad history of black-mail and imperialism, but may be entering an era where the cards will be dealt more equally.