The National Interest: Don't Fear Turkey's Energy Power Play
In the next decade, Turkey will become a major transit country for natural gas into Europe. In a region where almost every country wants to become an energy hub in order to raise its geostrategic profile, Turkey’s elevated role is causing widespread alarm. Yet such concerns are misplaced: Turkey has little to gain and much to lose by abusing its position as a transit country for gas into Europe. Rather than engage in meaningless rivalry to become hubs, countries in the region should recognize that a new pipeline from Russia to Turkey could be a blessing in disguise if they can strengthen the market forces that will really deliver energy security for the region.
The European Union already gets a sliver of its gas needs via Turkey: a modest amount of Azerbaijani gas flows via Turkey into Greece, meeting 20 percent of that country’s demand in 2014. But within a decade, two pipelines will turn Turkey into a more significant transporter: the Trans-Adriatic pipeline (TAP) that will carry (at least) 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year into the Balkans and Italy; and the newly proposed and tentatively named Turk Stream pipeline that will establish a second link between Russia and Turkey and will allow Moscow to ship gas to southeast Europe via Turkey rather than (or in addition to) Ukraine.
We do not know enough about Turk Stream to gauge its full importance yet (nor can we be sure it will be built). After all, South Stream, the pipeline that Turk Stream replaced, changed much from its inception until it was abandoned in November 2014: its proposed size doubled, its route and end-point changed, and so did the companies involved in it. Yet, we know that Russia would ship through Turkey natural gas that now transits Ukraine. This is what happened when Nord Stream, the pipeline connecting Russia to Germany, came online in late 2011: it served as an alternative route for gas that had previously crossed Ukraine. The amount of natural gas Russia will ship through Ukraine this year is roughly half of what it shipped in 2005, in part due to Nord Stream. Turk Stream would deliver another blow to Ukraine, as Turkey becomes the conduit for Russian gas into the Balkans and possibly Italy.