TURKEY'S DESECURITIZATION OF ENERGY RESOURCES IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN AFTER RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR

Authors : Mehmet Ferhat Firat, Rahman Dağ

Pages : 148-171

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Publication Date : 2023-12-31

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :After the Russia-Ukraine war, energy politics has become a subject of security studies due to the European states\' energy dependency on Russian natural gas. With the Russia-Ukraine war, Eastern Mediterranean gas has become more critical for the EU\'s energy security. However, the ongoing disputes and impossibilities regarding the transfer of Eastern Mediterranean gas to Europe have opened the door for the actors to re-evaluate the securitized energy relations. Turkey has been securitizing discovered energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean with discourses on the violation of its maritime sovereignty and ignoring the Turkish Cypriots by the actors in the region. This paper argues that Turkey\'s energy politics in the region tends to take the opposite direction, from securitization to desecuritization. Turkey\'s decades-long energy hub projects will serve to this end and gain more importance for Europe. In this sense, Turkey accelerated its desecuritization initiatives by taking normalization steps with the regional actors Israel, Egypt, and Greece, against which Turkey securitized energy resources.
Keywords : Rusya Ukrayna Savaşı, Güvenlikleştirme, Güvenlikdışılaştırma, Enerji Güvenliği, Doğu Akdeniz