Istanbul, The Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Alp Arslan Bayraktar, announced that his country had reached an agreement with Azerbaijan to cooperate in transporting natural gas from Turkmenistan to Turkey via the territories of Azerbaijan and Georgia. Bayraktar said in a press statement after the signing of a memorandum of cooperation between Turkey and Azerbaijan in the field of natural gas, which was signed today on the Azerbaijani side by Minister of Economy Mikail Japarov: Turkish-Azerbaijani cooperation in the field of energy contributes, on the one hand, to meeting their own needs, and on the other hand, to the security of energy supplies to Europe. He stressed that cooperation between Ankara and Baku on the level of natural gas has moved to a new stage with the signing of the cooperation memorandum today, which will allow the transportation of gas from Turkmenistan via Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey and from there to European and global markets. He explained that the memorandum o f cooperation also includes transferring other resources and natural gas from Azerbaijan and the Caspian region to Turkey, and transferring part of it to global markets, until 2030. He pointed to the success of Turkish-Azerbaijani cooperation in the field of energy with previously completed projects, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline and the trans-Anatolian gas pipeline project "TANAP". Bayraktar announced that Turkey and Azerbaijan are preparing to launch a new pipeline to transport natural gas to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Region, which belongs to Azerbaijan and borders the Turkish border to the east, indicating that natural gas will reach Nakhchivan next winter from Turkey via the Igdir-Nakhchivan pipeline. Source: National Iraqi News Agency