TURKEY’S CHANGING ROLES IN THE GEOPOLITICS OF ENERGY TRANSPORT: A DISCURSIVE APPROACH

Abstract

After the end of the Cold War the issue of energy transportation emerged as a new pillar and critical dimension of Turkey’s geopolitical importance and made an irreversible entrance into the agenda of Turkish governments. Turkey adapted its traditional geopolitical language to the energy field by developing many metaphors and concepts such as energy bridge, energy terminal, energy corridor, energy hub or energy trade center that identify Turkey’s strategic position in potential oil and gas transportation projects in Eurasia region. What has been worth to consider has been the changing prominence of these concepts and metaphors depending on certain time periods. This paper draws attention to this change in the usage of these concepts and metaphors by highlighting the breaking points in the official discourse on Turkey’s geopolitical role in energy transport in post-1990 process. Inspired by the views of critical geopolitics approach, it seeks to understand the relation between the context, discourse and Turkey’s foreign energy policy within historical process of energy relations with specifically US, EU and Russia. The paper also touches upon the effect of the war in Ukraine, energy transition, Turkey’s new position as a small-scale hydrocarbon owner, its policies on renewable energy and hydrogen in the process of recreating its geopolitical roles.

Keywords: Turkish foreign policy; energy geopolitics; discourse