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Turkey’s entangled (energy) security concerns and the Cyprus question in the Eastern Mediterranean
Abstract
The chapter aims to examine the reasons why those energy discoveries have failed to help bring peace to Cyprus. Drawing on Regional Security Complex Theory and Securitization Theory , it argues that the Eastern Mediterranean's peculiar regional characteristics, particularly those of Turkey, have created the political conditions for the securitization of these energy discoveries and their proposed export routes.
... For instance, when NATO invited Cyprus to the NATO change of command ceremony Turkey boycotted the event (Cetin, 2019). Moreover, fearing marginalisation by the US-backed Eastern Mediterranean Gas corridor initiativeled by the EU, Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Egypt, and Qatar -, Turkey signed a maritime border agreement with Libya that consolidated its territorial claims over the Eastern Mediterranean waters (Iseri, 2019;Iseri & Bartan, 2019). It also established a drone base in Northern Cyprus to monitor natural gas drilling in the region (Iseri, 2019;Iseri & Bartan, 2019). ...
... Moreover, fearing marginalisation by the US-backed Eastern Mediterranean Gas corridor initiativeled by the EU, Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Egypt, and Qatar -, Turkey signed a maritime border agreement with Libya that consolidated its territorial claims over the Eastern Mediterranean waters (Iseri, 2019;Iseri & Bartan, 2019). It also established a drone base in Northern Cyprus to monitor natural gas drilling in the region (Iseri, 2019;Iseri & Bartan, 2019). ...
Focusing on Turkey’s 68-year-old formal alliance with the US, this study asks why the alliance persists in spite of diverging perceptions of threat and worldviews. The first section of the article explains that the alliance has been transformed into a more than a threat-centric and transactional partnership over time. The second section focuses on the key issues of the US–Turkey alliance management between January 2009 and 2020 and points to a significant increase in the alliance security dilemma. The third section explores the AKP leadership’s divergent worldviews and rising contestations against the US. Overall, the study argues that both transactional and ‘order-centric’ arguments can be useful to explain the resilience of the US–Turkey alliance in the post-Cold War era.
... Nevertheless, hydrocarbons in the Cyprus basin (as everywhere), 'may easily be a curse rather than a blessing or be a curse before they become a blessing'. 83 Indeed, Turkey's response to the Trans-Adriatic pipeline and the East-West energy corridor to prevent any unilateral advantage by Greek Cypriots in the Eastern Mediterranean without the Cyprus issue being resolved is highly likely and-considering the latest deployment of drilling shipping vessels in Greece's EEZ in summer 2020 defying the EU's advice not to-is increasing the heated Turkish rhetoric and assertive policies in the region. As Erdoğan asserted recently together with a pledge to protect the rights and interests of Turkish Cypriots: 'Those who dream of changing the fact that Turkish Cypriots are an integral part of the Turkish nation will realize it is in vain'. ...
Cyprus has featured prominently on Turkey’s foreign policy agenda in recent years. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has weaved this long-standing issue into a broader narrative of ‘geographical imagination’. Cyprus policy has thus reflected the AKP’s socio-political vision of a ‘Yeni Türkiye’ (New Turkey), first articulated nearly a decade ago, in which well-entrenched narratives about national identity and the Cyprus conflict are central. Against this backdrop, Cyprus has been leveraged in the twin interests of AKP survival (boosting incumbency through nationalist appeals) and Turkey’s regional power aspirations. The present article offers a timely survey of Turkey’s Cyprus policy over a 15-year period from 2002 (when the AKP rose to power) until the failure of the negotiation talks on Cyprus in Crans-Montana, Switzerland in July 2017. In so doing, the article charts the important continuities as well as the key markers of transition in Ankara’s policy towards Cyprus under the AKP.
This chapter explores why and how Blue Homeland has become the leading concept and symbol of Turkish naval activism since 2004. By analyzing the interaction between structural factors, systemic stimuli, and domestic politics, it explains the AKP government’s approach to Turkish foreign policy in its initial years and the reaction from Kemalist officers in the navy who proposed the Blue Homeland concept. It traces interest group logrolling, state-society relations, and an alternative strategic culture that emerged with the “Strategic Depth” and “zero problems with neighbors” policies of the former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu against the dominant Kemalist culture.
This chapter analyzes the AKP government’s regional policies, domestic power struggles, and priorities that shaped a new logrolled coalition in the lead up to the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016. It traces competing strategic cultures by examining historical sources of information to discern if and how they contributed to the foreign policy decisions toward the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean under the shifting priorities of national security. It shows that the interest deficit between Turkey’s rising relative power and its acknowledged role in the system since the 2010s created tensions that the country has tried to bridge by acting more assertively.
This chapter analyzes the factors that contributed to a more general foreign policy re-orientation and ascendence of an activist naval posture between 2016 and 2020. In essence, it shows that the main difference between previous decades and the post-2016 era is that Blue Homeland’s policy prescription ceased to be just a proposed naval doctrine within the military realm, and instead acquired both practical and symbolic dimensions in the political realm. Based on the pillars of a new strategic paradigm, Blue Homeland ascended as an outcome of power consolidation in domestic politics and re-securitization in foreign policy.
This chapter consists of a critical analysis of main themes that discuss changes in Turkish foreign policy and maritime geopolitics. It provides political, economic, and security arguments for and against emergence of the Blue Homeland naval concept in Turkey. In essence, it reviews discussions about maritime geopolitics and provides examples of cases from other countries as well as Turkey. With the focus on structural factors in world politics that act as triggers for policy change, the chapter provides an overview of relevant arguments globally and strategic thinking about Blue Homeland specifically.
Turkish foreign policy has experienced a profound transformation in the nearly two decades since the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) came to power. In its first decade (2002–2011), the AKP government sought to consolidate, promote, and implement its agenda through the use of soft power while also aligning Turkey with the West and EU conditionality. However, since 2011 domestic and international developments have led Ankara to pursue a ‘logic of strategic autonomy.’ Since the failed coup attempt in July 2016 – which reinforced a trend towards resecuritization in Turkish foreign policy – relations with the EU in general and Greece, in particular, have grown more complicated, leading to a militarized and increasingly tense situation in the region. Against this backdrop, the present article analyses the rekindling of the ‘Aegean Cold War’ since 2016, focusing principally on the Aegean, Cyprus, and the refugee crisis and the EU’s ambivalent policy towards Turkey and Greek–Turkish relations in general.
The energy politics highlight rising tensions and new cooperative patterns in the Eastern Mediterranean region. We question the reasons for the lack of cooperation between Turkey and regional states during the regionalization process, in terms of offshore hydrocarbon resources development, between 2010 and 2020. In contrast to power-driven accounts for cooperation, we demonstrate the role of ideational mechanisms through framing analysis and process tracing. We argue that Turkey’s isolation from the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum and shifts in Turkish foreign policy preferences are explained plausibly by cognitive priors, redefined causal ideas, and emulation of exogenous ideas.
Energy governance has been widely prescribed to address the energy trilemma (i.e., energy security, energy equity, and environmental sustainability) at global, regional, and national levels. This is a particularly daunting task for those net energy importer developing countries with growing energy consumption levels to fuel their growth. Drawing on primary documents and statistics along with the relevant academic literature and reports, the chapter scrutinizes energy governance in Turkey with a particular emphasis on the neoliberal developmentalist model of its carbon-intense economy with ambitious regional energy diplomacy (i.e., pipeline politics). Albeit its generous renewable energy resource endowment and renewable energy support mechanisms/initiatives, energy governance deficits with limited norm diffusion/policy transfer/convergence prospects from the EU slowdown energy transition of the country. The chapter concludes that the new normal of the post-COVID-19 provides a significant opportunity not only for the revitalization of its economy based on the renewable energy sector and energy-efficient technologies but also harnesses the energy transition of Turkey towards a green economy.
İklim değişikliğinin etkilerini yakından hisseden ve yenilenebilir enerji potansiyeli yüksek bir bölge olan Doğu Akdeniz’de karar alıcıların sürdürülebilir enerji politikaları benimsemesi beklenirdir. Hâlbuki Türkiye ile Yunanistan deniz yetki alanları paylaşımı ihtilafı bulunan Kıbrıs açıklarındaki fosil yakıtların kontrolü için jeopolitik rekabet içerisindedir. Buradan hareketle ilgili çalışma öncelikle farklı enerji güvenliği yaklaşımlarını (liberal piyasalar/ticaret, jeopolitik ve çevresel) irdeleyecektir. Bu yaklaşımların ışığında, çalışma çeşitli güvenlik dinamiklerinin etkisindeki Doğu Akdeniz’deki egemen enerji jeopolitiği yaklaşımından, çevresele geçişin nasıl mümkün olabileceğinin izini sürecektir.
Why do riparian states of the Eastern Mediterranean seemingly fight over fossil resources down at the sea bottom, miles and miles away, instead of developing joint projects accelerating optimum use of their renewable energy resources, that are also compatible with the climate act. Analytical tools that are used in the discussions over the concept of “security” in the International Relations (IR) literature might be instructive for being able to answer this thorny question.
