Energy Security of Turkey

This study analyzes whether Turkey ensures energy security, compared to some criteria in regard to various energy resources, or not. The paper will firstly explain the meaning of energy security and its main concepts such as energy diversity and storage. Given answer to the question how energy security is perceived in some countries like USA, EU, China, and Russia, the paper takes an interest in Turkey’s energy security. To determine the amount of energy dependency of Turkey, the paper concentrates on the consumption and production of various energy resources like coal, oil and natural gas in the country. Then it emphasizes over the diversification of energy suppliers and emergency policies under some energy crisis. Energy has a vital importance in human life and is perhaps one of the most important factors in economic growth. Until 1970, energy was cheap and easily obtained compared today. After the oil crisis of 1973 this situation has been gradually changed and most of the countries started to face with energy problem. Energy security has been the main foreign policy issue for some countries. Particularly USA puts very active foreign policies into practice for energy security. Similarly EU creates some projects to secure energy for Europe. IEA puts minimum requirement such as 90 days oil stocks to prevent possible effects of oil crisis for members. Turkey seems to be a non self-sufficient country in respect to oil and natural gas according the recent data and has to import growing energy demand from other countries. Therefore, energy security should be the main problem in Turkey’s energy policies. But there are some problems for securing energy in reality. Especially Turkey has diversification problems for natural gas unlike oil. Turkey has no storage facility for natural gas and also didn’t perform to lay minimum 90 days oil stock down as a necessary condition of IEA up to now. Finally we can say that Turkey will live serious energy security problems if it faces with any shortage in oil or natural gas.