اصلاح مقررات در صنعت انرژی ترکیه: تجزیه و تحلیل

The Republic of Turkey has initiated an ambitious reform program in the most important segments of her energy market; which requires privatization, liberalization as well as a radical restructuring of these industries. However, there is no consensus that the measures introduced are optimal. The present article attempts, first, to evaluate the regulatory framework created by the laws of 2001 in terms of economic efficiency considerations; and second, to determine what still needs to be done to improve the current situation. The paper not only provides an analysis of these reforms but also lists some policy suggestions. The study concludes that despite relatively good legislative framework, in practice, the reforms in Turkey are far from ideal as they are mainly in the form of “textbook reforms”; and therefore a significant amount of work still lies ahead of Turkey to set up a fully fledged energy market.

The Republic of Turkey (hereafter Turkey) has initiated a major reform program of the regulatory framework surrounding the most important segments of her energy market; namely, electricity, natural gas, petroleum and liquefied petroleum gas industries. The reform program entails privatization, liberalization as well as a radical restructuring of the whole energy industry. Also, an autonomous regulatory body, Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EMRA), was created to set up and maintain a financially strong, stable, transparent and competitive energy market. Although there exists a huge literature on market regulation; to the best of my knowledge, so far, no scholar has studied and analyzed the regulatory framework created by the laws of 2001 in terms of economic efficiency considerations or tried to answer the question what still needs to be done to improve the current situation. The present article aims at filling this gap in the literature. Since it is obvious that the reforms will have important implications for the future of the country, the present article constitutes an important contribution not only to the existing literature but also to the energy policy formulation process in Turkey. The paper is organized as follows. The next section presents the historical background of Turkish energy markets starting from the early 1900s up to the present time. Section 3 provides an overview of recent market reforms. Section 4 critically analyzes the compatibility of regulatory practice in Turkey with the theory of regulation. To improve current regulatory framework, next section lists some policy suggestions with crucial importance. The final section concludes.

Despite relatively good legislative framework, the current regulatory policy in Turkey towards the energy industry in practice seems to be far from ideal. The reforms are mainly in the form of “textbook reforms”, meaning that they are simply copied from regulation literature with some modifications but in practice the crucial underlying economic logic behind them is not taken into account either by EMRA or by the Turkish government. It should not be forgotten that every new structure entails new understanding of the issues. However, in Turkish case, new reform has been tried to be implemented within previous degenerated bureaucratic understanding, which is simply impossible. As long as the vital decisions regarding the future of energy industry have been taken in the depths of some government departments, including those of EMRA; it is definitely impossible to create a fully functioning market and the result may turn out to be a disaster for the country as a whole. On the other hand, the energy industry is a complex one; and the creation of a market for energy, where none previously existed, is no easy task. Not surprisingly, there will be problems but most of them will disappear with the growth of more effective competition provided that necessary change in understanding mentioned above is materialized. If reforms are practiced by taking into account their underlying economic logic, there is no reason not to believe that the domestic and foreign investors will be greatly interested in entering a market with excellent growth potential, like Turkish energy market. If implemented properly, the reforms my transform Turkey from a simple so-called “Eurasia energy corridor” into an “energy base” where electricity is produced and exported to various regions surrounding the country, especially Europe. Also, one should not blame the bureaucrats in the Turkish energy industry, its unions, and others for trying to protect what they see as their interests by persuading the government to retain previous structure as much as possible. But it will be a catastrophe for the country as a whole if they are successful in doing so as the way would be open for continued government manipulation of these public corporations. As no meaningful competition has developed so far, a significant amount of work still lies ahead. It should not be forgotten that the true test of regulatory success comes in the form of whether a structure in which generators, suppliers, customers and other actors in the market can all freely negotiate, each taking their own view of the prices, risks, opportunities and threats that a competitive market offers is created or not.