NATO's Complimentary Role in Energy Security and Turkey's Potential Contributions at the New Energy Geopolitics

Abstract

Energy-related issues gained a prominent place within the NATO's new strategic concept declared during the Lisbon Summit (November 20, 2010). This final strategic concept is to address two new sources of threat within the new energy geopolitics - 'resource nationalism' and 'energy terrorism' which deeply concern those NATO members that require imported energy resources to meet their soaring domestic demand. Lisbon Summit to remove, if not alleviate, these security challenges tasked NATO with a set of specific roles. As a melting pot of the said two energy related risks, Turkey with its pledge to become the fourth energy artery of Europe will likely serve as a litmus test for NATO's new energy role. To what extent NATO will contribute to Turkey's energy security will depend on the degree to which Ankara will find conformity/coherence in between Turkey's own energy security reliance on Russia and NATO's possible demands sourcing from the Alliance's new role conception (based around energy). The prospect of such conformity/coherence matters for both the future terms of relations between the Alliance and Turkey and the relevance of NATO as a security providing organization within the upcoming decades. Especially, in a period of time when the Georgian War of 2008 still haunts the Wider Black Sea Region meanwhile the Arab 'Spring' further eclipses already weak stability within the Middle East.