Abstract—After five Turkish Republics gained independence
in Central Asia and Caucasia after the end of the Cold War,
Turkish decision makers followed an active policy in the
Caspian Region. In this study, post-Cold War Turkish foreign
policy in the Caspian Region was analyzed within the context of
natural gas and oil pipeline projects. For this aim, global and
regional actors’ struggle to control the critical energy
infrastructure in the Caspian Region to enhance their energy
security was analyzed. Natural gas and oil pipeline projects that
were developed to transport hydrocarbon reserves of the
Caspian Region to Europe such as Baku-Tiflis-Ceyhan,
Baku-Tiflis-Erzurum, Trans-Caspian, South Stream, Nabucco
and Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline were evaluated. Regional
policies of the global and regional actors and repercussions of
these policies to the Turkish foreign policy were examined. It is
estimated that struggle among the regional and global actors to
enhance their influence over the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian
Region and over the routes that the Caspian gas and oil are
transported to international markets will continue. Turkey’s
efforts to become an energy hub and one of the key countries of
the east-west and north-south energy corridors will intensify.
Index Terms—Turkish foreign policy, Caspian region,
geopolitics, geoeconomics, energy security.
Gokhan Ozkan is with the Department of International Relations, Bursa
Technical University, Bursa, Turkey (e-mail: ozkan.gkhn@ gmail.com).
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Cite: Gokhan Ozkan, " Post-Cold War Turkish Foreign Policy in the Caspian
Region within the Context of Pipeline Geopolitics and
Geoeconomics," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity vol. 5, no. 7, pp. 632-639, 2015.