The Turkish Energy Transition: A means to analyze a new political regime?

In the era of the Anthropocene, energy transition has become an imperative not only for the advanced economies, but also, in various forms and degrees, for the so-called developing or emerging countries. This paper looks into one of these contexts: Turkey. We make the hypothesis that the Turkish energy transition (enerjide dönüşüm), which has become a major pillar of a broader transition project, is shaping, while being shaped, by policy changes promoted as the only way forward for the country. The study focuses on two very different sectors which are placed at the core of the official transition policies: nuclear and wind energy. It consists of two parts. We first analyze the energy transition as a situated project and explore its forms of justification and legitimization. Second, we approach it as a governing practice and examine how it has been concretely implemented, in order to identify the related forms of government. Some of the latter provide valuable analytical elements to describe the new political regime that is in the process of establishment in Turkey and in which energy issues need to be reintegrated.