Daily Sabah: Turkey is Bound to Become a Regional Energy Hub

The concept of "energy supply security" was the most important conceptual innovation introduced to the academic literature by the two oil crises in the 1970s. Since then, this concept has been remembered as a result of various geostrategic risks and developments in international politics, creating new geopolitical advantages for transit countries. As energy supply security became an even more crucial issue in the increasingly volatile and fast changing globalized economy, the uninterrupted production and safe transfer of oil and natural gas became a vital issue for the sustainability of major economies, especially in the Middle East.

While certain countries have taken advantage of this conundrum because they were blessed with rich, strategically important hydrocarbon resources, countries such as Turkey that holds a unique geostrategic position on trade and energy routes gained systemic importance. Over the course of the last decade, Turkey's critical geostrategic location has both facilitated the achievement of a major expansion in international trade and also provided great leverage in Eurasian energy politics. The Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), which contains several interconnected projects, namely the South Caucasian Pipeline (SCP), Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), envisions the transfer of 1.2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas from the Shahdeniz field in the Caspian Sea to Europe through Turkey. The SGC's vision is hailed as one of the key energy projects designed to reduce Europe's dependency on Russia energy. Following the geostrategic crisis in Ukraine during which Russian President Vladimir Putin did not hesitate to use the energy card against the European Union, alternative projects that bypasses the troubled north of the Black Sea such as the SGC gained greater importance. MORE