Insight Turkey
Insight Turkey
Challenging ideas
On Turkish politics and International affairs

Author

Mert Bilgin

İstanbul Medipol University
Mert Bilgin
Turkey’s Energy Strategy: Synchronizing Geopolitics and Foreign Policy with Energy Security
April 1, 2015
This article analyzes Turkey’s official energy strategy to indicate how it responds to actual challenges by striking a compromise between market characteristics, and geopolitics and foreign policy. It points to Turkey’s growing energy demand as one of the most significant factors that affect the country’s policies and elaborates how Turkey’s supply security perspective intersects with geopolitical features and foreign policy issues on behalf of international cooperation. The first section, with conceptual highlights, gives a brief picture of the actual energy security challenges that Turkey faces. The second part focuses on Turkey’s official energy strategy (Turkey’s Energy Strategic Plan, as introduced by the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources) to understand how these policies respond to the challenges Turkey faces. The final section gives an idea of how Turkey’s energy security strategy supports international cooperation with diverse actors.
Geo-Economics of European Gas Security: Trade, Geography and International Politics
October 1, 2010
This paper hypothesizes that analyzing the geo-economic and energy security characteristics of gas supplies to Europe may help in understanding the features of regional and international relations with regard to selected countries. The paper highlights the significance of natural gas in the New Energy Order, and points to the importance of supply security for the EU. It looks at Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Algeria as suppliers and Turkey as a transit country in an emerging gas corridor to Europe. It examines supply-side opportunities, which promote new fields of international cooperation based on gas trade, and addresses certain restraints that may reduce the likelihood of further regional cooperation. Economic and geographic factors create new opportunities for regional trade and international relations. This geo-economic aspect, however, takes place with international security issues varying from case to case.

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