Understanding Pipeline Politics in Eurasia: Turkey’s Transit Security in Natural Gas

�ge, Kerem

Abstract

As the importance of natural gas for the energy future of the European Union rises, many new pipeline projects are proposed to transfer rich resources of Eurasia towards Europe. Why do some of these projects succeed, and others fail? To explain this phenomenon, the energy security literature has focused mostly on the security of energy supply and demand, while the specific challenges faced by transit states attracted relatively less attention. This paper focuses on the reasons that make pipeline politics and economics controversial and challenging by introducing and operationalizing the concept of transit security. It defines transit security broadly where transit countries are sensible to changes in supply and demand in addition to pipeline-specific issues, which are determined by a combination of economic and geopolitical factors. It argues that in the case of Turkey, transit security is influenced by asymmetries in trade dependence and political power in addition to prospect of future rents from transit. The last section applies this framework to Eurasian gas transit in order to explain the success and failure of past, present, and future pipelines.

Citation

Öge, K. (2021). Understanding Pipeline Politics in Eurasia: Turkey’s Transit Security in Natural Gas. Geopolitics, 26(5), 1510-1532. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2019.1687447

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 28, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Nov 12, 2019
• Publication Date: 2021
• Deposit Date: Nov 20, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: May 13, 2021
• Journal: Geopolitics
• Print ISSN: 1465-0045
• Electronic ISSN: 1557-3028
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 1510-1532
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2019.1687447
• Keywords: Political Science and International Relations; Geography, Planning and Development
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3343879
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14650045.2019.1687447
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Geopolitics on 12 Nov 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14650045.2019.1687447
• Contract Date: Nov 20, 2019