Along with the concept of globalization, the changing paradigm in international politics has been attached to energy policies of states. From an economic perspective to political tendencies, the interdependency of energy and security concerns illustrates the possible outbreak of wars and national conflicts around the globe. Turkey, within the geo-political and geo-strategic position, is under a competitive challenge of security paradigm whilst the hegemonic powers’ energy policies attach to her hinterland in the region. This chapter examines the energy policies of great powers in the international arena and the effects of these policies on developing countries. In this study, alternative security strategies and energy policies have been assessed for long-term economic and politic stability for Turkey.
TopIntroduction
Recently an internationalizing part of the world geography has been taking place within the wholesale transformation. With the advent of new technologies some people living in the world have been involved in this transformation process. A new mode has been penetrated into the ongoing system while domination of capitalist system keeps its validity all around the world.
Now the capitalist accumulation cannot be kept in defined boundaries. We are in the process of which the nation states make outmode; with the new geographic developments, the boundaries of the nations are redefined and concepts of localization, identity and diversity are suddenly taken into account. This all process is called as globalization and it has a lot of dimensions; from economic to political, from social to cultural and from technological to ecological.
In that way the world has become smaller in economic, cultural and social sense. These changes in information and communication technologies have caused different ways of global acting. Huge and ever-increasing amounts of economic activity have started in the form of cross-border relationships with the integration of world-wide economy and fast urban growth.
An economic growth, free markets without government ‘interference’ as the most efficient and socially optimal allocation of resources, economic globalization, and privatization remove the inefficiencies of a public sector.
Among the global transformations, the dissolution of what social scientists call the “Keynesian consensus” among the state, labor market and big business enterprises in the late 1970’s, the transformations of welfare states, globalization, neoliberal ideology and deregulation of national economies are the prominent ones. These global transformations led to the momentous emergence of new poverty structures and new inequalities in the global context.
The global processes relevant to the discussion here are the ebbing of the Keynesian consensus, which aimed to administer the national economies and nation-state based financial system between the labor market, the state and the business sectors in the late 1970s the rise of the supranational bodies such as IMF and World-Bank to manage national and transnational economies in the early 1980s and globalization.
The story of the Turkey for the energy policy, actually, started with the discovery of the first oil deposit in the Middle East and the drilling of the first well in the Ottoman age, in the 19th century. After this period Turkey increased its importance because of its geographical advantage. But we can not say that Turkey is energy rich country and this situation is a burden for the country’s economy. For this reason in this short essay I will try to give information about energy dependence of Turkey in the energy sector. The paper consists of a few headings; Turkish energy resources, Turkish energy sector and Turkish energy policies.