Turkey’s Energy Role and Its Accession Process

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the larger implications of Turkey’s role as alternative pipeline-based energy corridor for bundled gas supplies to Europe. These implications may be viewed from the European Union (EU) and member-state perspectives, ranging from the choice of eventually allowing Turkey into the Union – as the ultimate destiny of its ongoing accession process – to considering energy cooperation as only one element of the myriad bilateral relationships that Turkey has with the EU or each of its member states. Indeed, we see evidence of both linkage and delinking strategies regarding Turkey’s energy role and its accession process in the current political discourse in Europe. Conversely, a prevalent Turkish reading of the implications of Turkey’s increasing energy role is based on the growing assumption of a strong association between these two matters. Thus, overall energy policy discussions have been occurring against a background based on the untested view of ‘Turkey entering Europe through pipelines.’