Mehmet Efe Biresselioglu

European Energy Security identifies the EU's main energy security challenges and looks at Turkey's possible role in this policy area. By investigating the role of Turkey as a westward transit hub for hydrocarbons from the Greater Caspian region, Middle East and North Africa, Biresselioglu explores European and Turkish energy profiles. In doing so he looks at the connection between geopolitics and energy security; the relationship between oil and natural gas resources and geography; the importance of the concept of energy security and the role of energy in foreign policy and international relations. Accordingly, the aim of the book is to determine what the challenges are to the future of Europe's energy security.

The bloody conflicts during the Yugoslav succession in the 1990s are responsible for the fact that the Balkan region has not been successful in its economic and political development. In the aftermath of this tragedy, six new states have been established and recognized by the international community, namely Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia in the Balkan region. Later, in 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia, however there is still a number of problems in its recognition. The Balkan region is not only limited to these countries, but should also include Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Moldova, Romania and Turkey in order to assess the geopolitical situation in a more comprehensive approach. Compared to 20th century, the Balkans has experienced peace and stability recently. Accordingly, its importance is no longer only concerned with security issues. The region has become an area of interest for economic and geopolitical reasons. Being able to influence the region is becoming essential for international actors. Given this rising importance of the Balkans, assessing the energy security is more crucial than ever. Therefore, this article aims to assess and review the energy security issue of the individual countries in the Balkans and assess the region’s level of energy security compared with the European Union indicators (EU). EU indicators are selected as a benchmark since all the countries are in Europe and directly affected by the regional geopolitics. In addition, the contemporary challenges related to the energy security to the region will be identified.

The Danish Straits, which connect Baltic Sea to North Sea as an oil transit choke point, are becoming vastly important as a gateway to Europe for Russian oil exports. In terms of the future source of Russian oil, the country is estimated to hold half of the total Arctic resources. This indicates the forthcoming increase in the importance of Danish Straits in the global energy security. Besides, two additional alternative and important choke points are located in Turkey, which are the Straits of Bosporus and Dardanelles, known as Turkish Straits. These straits are also one of the significant exit points of Russian oil exports but as Russia shifted its direction of oil exports toward Baltic ports, the strategic position of Turkish Straits have been affected from this transition as well. It is an open question whether the Turkish Straits will continue to be the outlet of Russian oil exports or the Danish Straits will take over that position in line with the oil resources development in the Arctic Region. This study aims to analyse the Turkish and Danish Straits and establish their significance in terms of energy security. The current and future oil export strategies of Russia on the existing chokepoints are also discussed, with special emphasis on the potential impacts of Arctic development as Russia continues with the exploration and extraction of Arctic oil resources.

Dünya, enerji kıtlığı olasılığının farkına, 1970’lerde gerçekleşen enerji krizinin neticesinde varmıştır. Bunun sonucu olarak, “enerji güvenliği” tabiri NATO üyesi devletler başta olmak üzere dünya devletlerinin gündeminde yer almaya başlamıştır. O zamandan beri, ekonomik komite, endüstriyel planlama, terörizmle mücadele planları, petrol arzının güvenliğini sağlama planı ve sivil olağanüstü hal planlaması da göz önünde bulundurularak, enerji güvenliği NATO için önemli bir mesele haline gelmiştir. Buna rağmen, enerji güvenliği hususu, tutarlı bir politika ya da kapsamlı bir yaklaşımın bir parçası olmak yerine, yukarıda belirtilen faaliyetlerin bir parçası olmuştur. Fakat Soğuk Savaştan sonra üye ülkelerin sayısındaki artış ve
ittifakın dönüşüm süreciyle birlikte güvenlik endişesi geniş bir alana yayılmıştır. Bu değişim enerjiyi de içeren kapsamlı bir güvenlikten daha fazlası olarak algılanmıştır. Artan fiyatlar, artan talep, arz güvenliği, terörizm ve doğal afetlerden meydana gelen teknik aksamaların da etkisi ile enerji güvenliği müttefikler
için önemli bir endişe konusu haline gelmiştir. Riga zirvesiyle başlayıp Bükreş, Strasbourg/Kehl ile devam eden ve 2010 yılında Lizbon’daki Stratejik Konsept’le enerji güvenliğinin ittifak için çok önemli bir mesele olduğu kabul edilmiştir. Bu makale, NATO’nun yeni enerji güvenliği bakış açısını çağdaş enerji güvenliği anlayışla geliştirerek incelemektedir. Bunun yanında, NATO üyesi olan Türkiye’nin katkısını ve muhtemel etkisini tanımlamakta ve Doğu-Batı enerji koridorunda enerji köprüsü olma amacını da sorgulamaktadır.

In the aftermath of the 1970s energy crisis, the globe has realized the possibility of energy scarcity. As a result, the term energy security has emerged in governmental agendas throughout the globe, especially in the NATO members. From that time, energy security became an important issue in NATO, considering the economic committee, industrial planning, planning in response to terrorism, defence planning for the supply of the oil and civil emergency planning. Though, it remained as an integral part of these activities, rather than a part of a consistent policy or a comprehensive approach. However, with the transformation of the alliance and increasing member states due to the end of Cold War, the range of the security concerns has widened. This change perceived as more of a comprehensive security provider, including energy. Therefore, energy security has become a major concern for the alliance due to increasing prices, increasing demand, supply security, terrorism and technical disruptions from natural disasters. Starting with Riga summit and followed by Bucharest, Strasbourg-Kehl and finally in the alliance’s new Strategic Concept at Lisbon, it acknowledged as a crucial issue for the alliance. Therefore, this article seeks to address the NATO’s new Energy Security perception, broadening with contemporary energy security understanding. Moreover, it identifies the possible contribution and impact of Turkey, a NATO member and aims to be an energy bridge within the East-West energy corridor.

Turkey's energy consumption is low compared to its young population. However, energy consumption is rapidly increasing as a result of economic growth in recent years, a trend which is expected to continue. Accordingly, guaranteeing adequate energy supply for its growing economy remains at the top of the governmental agenda. While energy consumption is increasing, Turkey is becoming increasingly dependent on fossil fuel imports, especially in oil and natural gas. Increasing awareness toward the environmental issues, energy prices and lack of diversification are the most immediate threats. All these are significant threats to Turkish energy security and thus have become a greater focus of attention. In response, Turkish energy policy is developing into a multi-dimensional one, considering the primary goals of securing energy supply and increasing the level of diversification and decreasing environmental effects. Accordingly, these considerations have tended to endorse renewable energy. Renewable energy resources are emerging as one of the most efficient, indigenous and effective solutions for clean and sustainable energy development in Turkey. Its geographical location allows extensive use of most types of renewable sources. This paper analyzes the current and possible future contribution of renewable energy in Turkish energy policy, considering supply security, diversification and environmental concerns.

Starting from the 1970s, the increasing rates of terrorist attacks to energy infrastructure has emerged as one of the major causes of energy disruption, which has consequences for all countries in the entire energy supply chain, in other words, overall energy security. The aim of this study is to examine the nature of terrorist attacks on the energy infrastructure, for the period between 1970 and 2011. Compared to previous studies focused on this area, this study considers a wider range of events, including minor scale ones. The data was retrieved from the target type of 'utilities' from global terrorism database (GTD) for the period between 1970 and 2011. Findings suggest that most of these attacks were carried out by left-wing terrorist organisations in volatile countries mainly in South America and Central America and Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s, regardless of the role of these countries in the global energy security.

This study reveals the causality relationships between overall production and consumption of each fossil fuel type (oil, natural gas and coal) for the period between 1985 and 2013 in 25 selected countries. The sample countries are the ten most important producers and consumers of related fossil fuel types during the sample period, subject to the available data. Hence, the main aim of this study is to analyze whether a shift in fossil fuel prices has an impact on the production and consumption of each fossil fuel type, or vice versa. Moreover, this study aims to determine whether examining general trends is sufficient to identify the specific causality conditions affecting individual countries. The assessed recent panel Granger causality methodology by Dumitrescu and Hurlin [9] allows us to reach robust and concrete findings. The majority of overall panel findings designate bilateral causality; on the other hand, heterogeneous (country specific) causality results generally represent a unilateral relationship. Hence, the analysis of the panel statistics shows a generally uniform result regarding existing trends; however, this study reveals that the particular condition of individual countries has a key influence on the direction of existing causality.

Turkey was among those countries which decided to increase its natural gas consumption in the 1990s, due to its relative low cost and lack of impact on the environment. However, a heavy dependence on imports, from Algeria, Qatar and Nigeria, respectively, creates a threat to energy security, both in terms of source and supply diversity. Accordingly, we follow an analytical approach to identify the accuracy of our assumption, considering the current economic, political and security risk. To this end, we formulate and solve a mixed integer programming model that determines the optimal sourcing strategy for Turkey’s increasing LNG demand. This model demonstrates a number of alternative policy options for LNG supply. Furthermore, we consider that increasing the proportion of LNG in the overall gas supply will contribute to the aim of improving Turkey’s level of energy security.

This paper assesses the natural gas supply security of 23 importing countries from divergent regions of the world for the period between 2001 and 2013. The indicators used for the study are the volume of imported natural gas, the number of natural gas suppliers, the level of dependency on one country, import dependency, the fragility of supplier countries, and the share of natural gas in primary energy consumption. The method used to establish the supply security index is the PCA (principal component analysis) over the indicators in the model for each country on a yearly basis for the period 2001 to 2013. The dispersed country sample enables the established index to measure the sensitivity of specific natural gas importer countries using a uniform framework. According to the results, the most effective indicators for the measurement of supply security are the number of supplier countries, supplier fragility, and the overall volume of imported gas.

Left-wing parties have tendency to consider environmental demands from the society more than the other parties with different orientation. Therefore it is argued that the left-oriented parties have a greater tendency to rely on renewable energy consumption. Using a data from Europe between the years 1999 and 2009, this study aims to examine the impact of government orientation on the level of renewable energy consumption. It is found that there is a significant and positive relationship between renewable energy consumption and countries’ government orientation, whether as a single ruling party or coalition, both from left-oriented or centre-oriented governments and a significant and negative relationship when a ruling party or coalition from right-oriented government. This study contributes to the currently limited literature on renewable energy consumption and government orientation by testing the relation empirically with the significant results.