Türkiye’s Status-Seeking Behaviour Towards the EU: Defining its Middle Power-Role Through its Energy Diplomacy

Aside for the security aspects that shape their foreign policy approach, middle powers are crucial geopolitical players in the modern multipolarity, where they develop wise energy security policies to clarify their role towards great powers. Among these powers, in the last decade Türkiye has emerged as a crucial bridge-builder between the EU energy market and the resources in Middle East and Central Asia. By developing its infrastructures, signing bilateral and multilateral agreements and conducting autonomous energy security policies, Ankara pursues a status-seeking behaviour to enhance its role as an energy provider for the EU. Several analyses have tried to describe the Turkish energy diplomacy towards the EU, trying to define its role by assessing its geopolitical approach. The results so far have provided interpretative conclusions that describe Türkiye’s role in the energy diplomacy towards the EU as a transit country or an undeveloped energy hub, ignoring the impact of its entrepreneurial security policies in the Mediterranean. The goal of this paper thus is to define Türkiye’s role as a middle power in its energy diplomacy towards the EU, focusing on the energy security policies that Ankara’s elites have developed ever since the failed coup towards the EU. Empirically, the analysis uses a theoretical framework based on the concepts of ‘energy diplomacy’ and ‘middle powers-role’, linking the status-seeking policies of a middle power with the security dimension of energy diplomacy. To operationalise such analysis, the methodology elaborates a dual approach based on the two methods used to describe middle powers’ behaviour: the systemic-impact and behavioural approaches. Moreover, to retrieve the data regarding the energy security policies of Turkey and the reaction of the EU on the system, the paper adopts a documentary type of analysis that uses as primary sources statements of the Turkish elites’ and European institutions. Observing the Turkish energy security policies towards the EU from 2016 to 2025, this paper concludes that Türkiye’s role as a middle power resembles the condition of a fully established bridge-builder with the ambition to become the main energy hub that can connect Europe and Asia. However, due to its geopolitical aspirations in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, and its dependence on external energy actors, Ankara faces diplomatic constraints that allow the EU to dialogue with other powers.