Manifesting Transactionalism in Energy Diplomacy: Turkey’s Foreign Policy Towards the EU

Energy and Geopolitics have become intertwined with the recent security threats that challenged energy security policies. For countries which aim to enhance status and emerge as energy hubs, energy diplomacy has become less about multilateralism and more about immediate solutions. Among the strategic postures that have been overlooked, transactionalism is rapidly emerging as a popular and mainstream strategy to secure short-term energy agreements and strengthen geopolitics of energy resources. Transactionalism has been conceptualised as an opportunistic strategy which prefers bilateral, short-term and populist choices over long-term, multilateral and strategically oriented solutions. Selecting Turkish energy diplomacy towards the EU, the paper conducts a qualitative content analysis based on interviews. It reconstructs Ankara’s energy security policies with the EU by interpreting the presence of its principles in a periodization that goes from 2011 to 2025 divided into three macro phases: a) 2011-2015 which covers the failure of Nabucco until the cancelling of the South Stream Project; b) 2016-2020 wherein Turkey realises alternative pipelines and enter into a geopolitical debate in Eastern Mediterranean; and finally c) 2021-2025 the most recent phase characterised by strong geopolitical changes that affect Turkish energy diplomacy towards the EU. This article argues that Turkey has adopted a partial transactionalism towards the EU in energy security policies, pursuing aggressive policies to secure both short and medium-term agreements though at the expense of its aspirations as a new energy hub for the EU market