Abant, the Middle East and oil politics

The Abant Platform is increasingly assuming an established institutional identity with accumulating achievements. The meaning of being a platform finds its concrete substance through each meeting held. Participants arrive at such meetings with increasingly modest expectations regarding what can and cannot be accomplished. Results that were largely unpredictable in the early meetings emerge as these gatherings become a tradition. The fact that people from different segments of society come together to debate and spend two or three days together reveals, above all, the disarray on an intellectual level stemming from our lack of communication. It is quite interesting that people who have worked in the same fields for years without ever hearing each other's names meet for the first time in such environments. The Platform contributes to some extent to overcoming this unawareness and lack of communication. It is certain that this makes a very significant contribution to our culture of meeting and debate. This time, with participants from Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, and Iran, the meeting acquired an international character, providing representation to key countries in the crisis region.

Each of the 12 papers presented at the meeting contained numerous theses worth discussing. Here, I would like to touch upon only the insightful speech delivered during the opening session by Minister of Energy Hilmi Güler, who explained the dimension of the Middle East problem's relationship with oil and natural gas within the context of Turkey's energy policy. Indeed, the majority of those who followed Güler's speech listened with excitement as the image of policy-lessness that had prevailed in the energy sector until now was beginning to fade away.

The revolutionary importance of the opening of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is currently officially sabotaged due to very trivial events dominating the headlines these days. Güler mentioned that with the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline coming online over time, both the security issue in the Straits would be resolved and Turkey's character as an energy corridor would be strengthened. He stated that with the addition of the Nabucco pipeline, extending from Azerbaijan to Europe, to this corridor, the main objective was rapidly shifting from being a corridor to becoming a terminal.

While a two-fold increase in global oil demand is expected by the year 2030, a three-fold increase is expected in natural gas demand. Therefore, the energy king of the future is not oil, but natural gas. While seventy percent of the world's gas reserves are located to the east of Turkey, seventy percent of the demand for it lies to the west of Turkey. Since Turkey is not a source country for oil or natural gas, it must base its energy policy on making the best possible use of its only option: being a transit point. And the way to take this to the highest level is not to settle for being a corridor, but to develop strategies toward becoming an energy terminal. Recently, Turkey has focused its efforts beyond a passive role that merely provides transit for energy, toward a model where passing oil is also refined and resold, thereby maximizing profit from the energy passing through. It was impossible for what Güler explained not to excite a person. However, the implicit messages contained in Güler's remarks encouraging Arab countries to appreciate the value of oil assume that Arab countries can act very independently and autonomously in their policies, which is highly debatable.

Truth be told, that the Middle East constitutes the name of a problem for some appears, at first glance, to stem from the inability to achieve the desired stability here. Yet, it is becoming increasingly evident that these regions constituting a problem area is necessary for maintaining the cohesion of a global economy and an international political order. The arguments of the famous political scientist Timothy Mitchell (Birikim magazine, Issue: 169) are of a nature to alter perspectives on the oil-related problem of the Middle East. According to Mitchell, the Middle East problem stems not from a scarcity of oil supply, but on the contrary, from an excess of it. It is not the supply of Middle Eastern oil in lesser quantities than needed, but rather the possibility of its supply in large quantities that poses a problem. This is because the world is not yet ready to substitute an alternative for an oil-based economy. Aside from oil lobbies obstructing the search for alternative energy, securing maximum profit from oil reserves is the most crucial strategy of these lobbies. Most of the turmoil and wars in the region are based on a strategy aimed both at preventing the devaluation of oil by keeping its supply within a certain limit and extending the lifespan of the oil-based economy. So far, the US has always found a way to seize the oil produced in the region anyway. In this respect, the oil-related dimension of the invasion of Iraq is less about seizing oil than continuing to control the oil supply. Domestic political issues arising from rising oil prices in America are already glossed over using the Middle East problem as a pretext.

In short, whichever way you look at it, the Middle East problem is, alongside its identity dimension, a highly fertile economic resource.