The Role of Eurasian Geopolitics on Turkish Energy Policy and Environmental Security: Interactions and New Dynamics

Abstract

Energy is a resource that is necessary to meet the basic needs of individuals and is used in almost every aspect of daily life. As an essential element of economic and socialdevelopment, energy resources, which form a solid foundation for the realization of bothdevelopment, have a critical role that can directly affect many sectors from education tohealth, employment to infrastructure and transportation. However, it is also a well-known factthat energy resources are not equally distributed across the world. While this situation causessome states to have easier or more difficult access to energy than others, it also leads toeconomic, political and strategic conflicts of interest between states.

The developments, particularly during the industrialization period and thereafter, haveincreased the demand and need for energy. This increased demand has resulted in majorpowers directing their focus towards energy-rich regions and competing with one another tocontrol these energy resources. Eurasian geopolitics which is the focus of this study due to itssignificant position in terms of energy resources, is a strategic geography where suchcompetition occurs and where the New Great Game is being played, with various actors, including Türkiye.  In this game, where actors aim for economic development by increasingboth production and consumption by providing more energy resources to their states, theenvironment is ignored. The relationship between energy use and the environment is one of the most important sustainability issues facing the world today. The cost of activities carriedout through energy usage is paid by the environment. Environmental pollution and in thiscontext environmental security, is a common problem for both Türkiye and all nations.

This study examines the changes and transformation of Türkiye energy policy as a result of the strategic games played in Eurasian geopolitics. Additionally, Türkiye’s environmentalsecurity policies will be analyzed to answer the question of whether environmental security is under threat.