Liberalisation of Natural Gas Markets: Potential and Challenges of Integrating Turkey into the EU Market: The Political Economy of the Middle East

This book investigates the overall natural gas reform performance of Turkey, addressing both shortfalls and setbacks that have prevented Turkey from the fulfillment of the regulatory implementation since 2001, and how the prospectively liberalised natural gas market can effectively operate at all levels. Although eighteen years have passed since the introduction of the first legislation as a basis for a more liberalised Turkish natural gas market, the completion of the reform process still suffers from a lack of enforcement. The book offers recommendations to address this, the main one being that policy makers should give due consideration to the consolidation of EMRA’s independent role with appropriate safeguards laid out to prevent attempts of regulatory misuse. The book concludes by suggesting that there is a compelling need to move forward with a consolidated reform sooner rather than later if Turkey genuinely wishes to take a leadership position in the race to become an efficient gas hub and be part of Europe’s single energy market.