Economy
Türkiye says experience made it better prepared for energy shocks
Türkiye’s energy markets have demonstrated strong resilience in the face of successive global shocks, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said on Friday, pointing to years of crisis-driven adaptation as a key strength.
Bayraktar was speaking at a panel on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum 2026, where he addressed the latest market turbulence linked to the Middle East conflict, while signaling a faster timeline for the country’s transition toward a low-carbon economy.
Energy prices have spiralled since the Strait of Hormuz, a vital global oil and gas shipping route, was closed as a result of the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran and Tehran attacking energy infrastructure in the Middle East. On Monday, Washington imposed a blockade on ships entering or leaving Iranian ports.
The crisis came as a test for countries heavily reliant on oil and gas imports, including Türkiye.
Bayraktar said Türkiye’s ability to withstand volatility stems from years of exposure to overlapping crises, including the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions and geopolitical conflicts such as the Russia-Ukraine war and tensions in the Middle East.
“This crisis has, of course, affected us deeply. However, our energy markets are quite resilient. Türkiye is resilient because we have experienced crises in the past. We are already living with the uncertainties surrounding us,” said the minister.
“Over the last six to seven years, we have experienced the climate crisis, the pandemic and uncertainties in the supply chain. Following the Russia-Ukraine war, Iran and the Middle East have all made Türkiye resilient. We are used to dealing with crises.”
Bayraktar emphasized that Türkiye’s energy strategy has evolved over the past 25 years, with reforms opening markets to private investment, expanding regional cooperation and delivering large-scale infrastructure projects. However, he warned that rapidly rising domestic energy demand presents a growing challenge.
Carbon-neutral policy
He emphasized that Türkiye’s long-term strategy centers on boosting energy security while reducing import dependence through diversification and increased use of renewables.
“Energy demand in Türkiye is increasing very rapidly. AI-based centers and factors like electric vehicles are driving up energy needs. We have set a goal to move away from fossil fuels and utilize electricity. As an import-dependent country, we want to reduce this dependency,” he noted.
“We have a carbon-neutral policy. Diversifying our energy resources is crucial for us. We want to benefit more from renewable energy sources. However, we are not turning our backs on fossil fuels either. We need to have an energy architecture.”
Despite its push toward cleaner energy, Türkiye must continue to meet immediate demand from conventional sources, Bayraktar noted. He said around 40 million vehicles are on the country’s roads daily, while approximately 22 million households rely on natural gas, underscoring the need to maintain stable fuel supplies.
Keyword: Renewables
The minister still said renewable energy would be the “keyword” for the economy going forward, with expanded capacity, storage solutions and system security critical to achieving long-term targets. Türkiye aims to become a carbon-neutral economy by 2050, though Bayraktar indicated the government is considering bringing some targets forward, including energy efficiency goals.
“We have a very strong goal to become a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. But we are considering advancing this target, potentially bringing it forward to 2035,” he said, adding that plans to implement a national energy efficiency program by 2040 could also be accelerated to 2030.
Türkiye is also deepening its international energy engagement, the minister said, noting that the country has invested in multiple cross-border projects and recently launched offshore drilling operations in Somalia.
One of most serious energy crises
The panel brought together senior policymakers, including Azerbaijan Energy Minister Perviz Shahbazov, Slovenian Environment, Climate and Energy Minister Bojan Kumer, and Francesco La Camera, head of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), all of whom highlighted the broader global implications of ongoing energy disruptions.
Shahbazov warned that the world is facing one of its most serious energy crises, pointing to risks surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, a key artery for global oil flows.
He said disruptions affecting up to 12 million barrels of oil could have far-reaching consequences, including increased fragility in Europe’s jet fuel supply.
“This is a global crisis. We all need to fight this crisis together. At this point, Azerbaijan has diversified its own supply routes. We supply 40 million barrels to 20 different countries. Recently, we have also started supplying natural gas to our European partners,” he noted.
He added that producer nations are also vulnerable to price volatility despite perceptions that they benefit from crises.
“Balanced prices are important for all of us,” said Shahbazov.
Coordinated action needed
Kumer said Slovenia, which imports all of its oil, has been hit by rising prices and declining volumes, particularly at a time of seasonal demand increases in agriculture.
“This crisis did not find us at the right time,” he said.
He stressed that the crisis underscores the need for coordinated action within the European Union.
“No country can manage such an energy crisis alone,” Kumer said, adding that shifting away from fossil fuels remains essential given limited domestic resources.
“Before the Ukraine war, we were importing natural gas from Russia. Renewable energy is the future of the world. Fossil fuel is not a resource that we possess,” he added.
Fossil fuel crisis
IRENA’s La Camera argued that the current turmoil reflects a structural weakness in a fossil fuel-based system rather than a conventional energy crisis.
“This is not an energy crisis. This is a crisis of the energy system being built on fossil fuels. This is a fossil fuel crisis. This will shift us more toward renewable energy,” he noted.
La Camera explained that renewable energy installations added in a single year now exceed decades of nuclear capacity growth. He cited countries such as Spain, where renewables account for a significant share of energy production, and Türkiye, which has been vastly investing in renewable energy sources, as examples of the transition already underway.
He warned that regions slow to embrace renewables risk losing economic competitiveness.
“For the economy to be competitive, the energy system must be strong. Europe still underestimates renewable energy resources. That is why Asia, which invests in renewable energy, is winning while Europe is losing,” La Camera said.
House sales in Türkiye declined by 2.1% year-over-year in March, according to data that also showed Iranians were the second biggest foreign homebuyers.
A total of 113,367 houses were sold last month, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said.
The figure compares with 115,788 sales recorded a year ago.
From January through March, residential property sales stood at 349,396 units, down 0.3% year-over-year, the data showed.
Istanbul led the market last month with 21,665 sales, followed by Ankara with 10,236 and Izmir with 7,278.
New home sales rose 1.3% year-over-year to 35,725 units, while second-hand sales fell 3.6% to 77,642 units.
Mortgage-backed sales jumped 35.9% to 25,978, accounting for 22.9% of total transactions.
Sales to foreigners declined 20% year-over-year to 1,353 units.
By nationality, the highest number of houses were sold to citizens of Russia with 229 units, followed by Iran with 130, and Iraq with 84.
Iranians have been among the top homebuyers in Türkiye for years, but the focus has centered on the impact of the war that started on Feb. 28 after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran.
The sides agreed to a two-week cease-fire last week and are weighing a return to Pakistan for further talks as early as the coming weekend.
Türkiye, a NATO member and neighbor of Iran, has been in close touch with the U.S., Iran and Pakistan, and has repeatedly called for the fighting to stop.
U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack said on Friday he expected Washington and Ankara to “soon” solve the issue of sanctions over Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 missile defenses.
“I think you are going to see the S-400 situation solved soon. From my boss’s point of view, acceptance into an F-35 program is fine,” Barrack said at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum.
Türkiye was excluded from the U.S.-led multinational program in 2019, and Washington imposed Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) sanctions over its purchase of Russian-made S-400 air defense systems.
Ever since, Ankara has repeatedly called the move unfair and voiced hope that the sides could overcome the issue during U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan raised the issue during the last September meeting with Trump at the White House. Trump later said the U.S. was “very seriously” considering the sale of F-35 jets to Türkiye.
In late 2024, Ankara secured a $7 billion deal with Washington for 40 F-16 jets. But talks have reportedly been dogged by Turkish concerns about the price and desire to buy F-35s instead.
Despite boasting NATO’s second-largest army, Türkiye often faced arms embargoes in the past. That pushed it to significantly boost domestic capabilities and curb foreign dependence over the last two decades.
Today, it produces a wide range of vehicles and arms types domestically, including its own drones, missiles and naval vessels. It’s also developing its own fifth-generation fighter jet.
Named Kaan, the stealth fighter is sought to replace the Air Force Command’s aging F-16 fleet, which is planned to be phased out starting in the 2030s.
Oil prices fell by more than 10% on Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump and Iran’s foreign minister said the Strait of Hormuz is now fully open, which would allow oil tankers to exit the Persian Gulf again and carry crude to customers worldwide.
The announcements came as a 10-day truce in Lebanon appeared to hold. The truce offered a pause in Israeli strikes on Lebanon and could clear one major obstacle to a deal between Iran and the United States and Israel to end weeks of devastating war.
In a social media post, Trump said Iran announced that the strait “is fully open and ready for full passage.”
Minutes earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on the social media X that the passage for all commercial vessels through the strait “is declared completely open” in line with the cease-fire in Lebanon. He said it would stay open for the remaining period of the truce.
It was not immediately clear what that meant for the U.S. blockade of the strait.
To recover the energy output lost in the Middle East from the conflict there will take about two years, Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said on Friday, while signaling that further emergency stock releases remain under consideration.
“That will vary from country to country. In Iraq, for example, it will take much longer than in Saudi Arabia,” Birol told an interview with Switzerland’s German-language daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung newspaper.
“However, we estimate it will take approximately two years overall to reach pre-war levels again,” he said.
Birol added that the market was underestimating the consequences of a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
But he said production would improve significantly once the key waterway reopens; however, reaching full capacity would still take time.
Shipments of oil and gas that were already en route to their destinations before the war in Iran began have now arrived, mitigating the impact of shortages, he said.
“But no new tankers were loaded in March. There were no new deliveries of oil, gas or fuels to Asian markets. This gap is now becoming apparent. If the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened, we must prepare for significantly higher energy prices.”
He said poorer countries could face the heaviest burden because weaker currencies and limited financial resources leave them more exposed to rising import costs.
Asked whether the IEA could carry out another release of emergency oil reserves after its March move, Birol said the agency was ready to act immediately and decisively.
“We’re not there yet, but it’s definitely under consideration,” Birol said.
In March, the agency released 400 million barrels from emergency reserves, the largest drawdown in the agency’s history.
Birol stressed reserve releases can only ease short-term bottlenecks, noting that the most important step for stabilizing energy supply is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Any move that helps reopen the waterway would be positive, he added.
Birol also said the IEA is tracking widespread damage to regional energy infrastructure, warning that markets should not expect an immediate return to normal even after the strait reopens.
He also warned that shortages of refined products such as kerosene and diesel could emerge if crude shipments fail to reach refineries, raising the risk of flight disruptions, cancellations, and industrial supply problems in some countries.
Russia’s top officials have outlined numerous proposals to President Vladimir Putin on how to kick-start the war economy after he scolded them for what amounts to the nation’s sharpest economic contraction in more than three years.
Russia’s economy, which contracted in 2022 but grew in 2023, 2024 and 2025, has outperformed most expectations and avoided the crash Western powers hoped to stoke by imposing the most onerous sanctions ever placed on a major economy.
But the strain of the war in Ukraine – the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II – and double-digit interest rates slowed growth to just 1% last year. Putin said Wednesday the economy contracted 1.8% in the first two months of this year.
At the start of a Kremlin meeting with Russia’s most powerful economic officials Wednesday, Putin said manufacturing, industrial production and construction were negative in the first two months compared to the same period last year.
Putin said the trajectory of the economy was below expectations and asked officials for detailed options on what can be done to remedy the situation.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that the closed part of Wednesday’s meeting lasted several hours and included a free exchange of opinions.
“The members of the government’s economic bloc have many proposals to activate the economy and give it greater momentum,” Peskov told reporters. He declined to provide details.
Attendees included Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Kremlin Deputy Chief of Staff Maxim Oreshkin, First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina and PSB bank CEO Piotr Fradkov.
Russia’s $3.1 trillion economy contracted 1.4% in 2022 but grew 4.1% in 2023 and 4.9% in 2024. It grew only 1% last year, and Moscow’s official forecast for this year is 1.3%.
Iran war boost
While there were serious concerns in Moscow about the economic slowdown ahead of the Iran war, the biggest energy supply crisis in modern history is likely to bolster the oil-producing economy.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday raised its forecast for Russia’s economic growth this year to 1.1%, from 0.8% previously, due to higher oil and other commodity prices resulting from the Middle East crisis.
Still, according to Russian state statistics, the last quarterly contraction of such intensity as the first quarter of this year was likely in the first three months of 2023, when GDP declined by 0.8%.
In a speech on Thursday, Nabiullina, who has served as Putin’s central bank chief since 2013, said the Russian economy is grappling with an acute labor shortage just as the Iran war stokes inflation risk.
“The peculiarity of the current situation is that for the first time in modern history, our economy has faced shortages or limits on labor,” she said, adding that the shortage has created a new reality for both the state and for business. “Now we have the deterioration of external conditions, one could say, that is almost constant both in exports and imports.”
At the same Moscow conference, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, who was also present at the Kremlin meeting, said the government is considering an early return to the foreign currency market after the ruble strengthened this month.
A stronger ruble helps the central bank fight inflation but is negative for economic growth as it eats into exporting firms’ profits, forcing them to cut investment, and makes Russian products less competitive.
The head of the International Energy Agency warned on Thursday of possible flight cancellations “soon” if oil supplies remain blocked by the Iran war, as he said Europe has “maybe six weeks or so (of) jet fuel left.”
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol painted a sobering picture of the global repercussions of what he called “the largest energy crisis we have ever faced,” stemming from the pinch-off of oil, gas and other vital supplies through the Strait of Hormuz.
“In the past there was a group called ‘Dire Straits.’ It’s a dire strait now, and it is going to have major implications for the global economy. And the longer it goes, the worse it will be for the economic growth and inflation around the world,” he told The Associated Press (AP).
The impact will be “higher petrol (gasoline) prices, higher gas prices, high electricity prices,” Birol said.
Economic pain will be felt unevenly, and “the countries who will suffer the most will not be those whose voice are heard a lot. It will be mainly the developing countries. Poorer countries in Asia, in Africa and in Latin America,” said the Turkish economist and energy expert who has led the IEA since 2015.
But without a settlement of the Iran war that permanently reopens the Strait of Hormuz, “Everybody is going to suffer,” he added.
“Some countries may be richer than the others. Some countries may have more energy than the others, but no country, no country is immune to this crisis,” he said.
Without a reopening of the waterway, some oil products may dry up, he warned.
In Europe, “I can tell you soon we will hear the news that some of the flights from city A to city B might be canceled as a result of lack of jet fuel,” he said.
Birol spoke out against the so-called “toll booth” system that Iran has applied to some ships, letting them travel through the strait for a fee. He said allowing that to become more permanent would run the risk of setting a precedent that could then be applied to other waterways, including the vital Malacca Strait in Asia.
“If we change it once, it may be difficult to get it back,” he said. “It will be difficult to have a toll system here, applied here, but not there.”
“I would like to see that the oil flows unconditionally from the point A to point B,” he said.
Birol said more than 110 oil-laden tankers and more than 15 carriers loaded with liquified natural gas are waiting in the Persian Gulf and could help ease the energy crisis if they could escape through the Strait of Hormuz.
“But it is not enough,” he added.
Even with a peace deal, strikes on energy facilities mean it could be many months before pre-war production levels are restored, he said.
“Over 80 key assets in the region have been damaged. And out of these 80, more than one-third are severely or very severely damaged,” he said.
“It will be extremely optimistic to believe that it will very quick,” Birol said. “It will take gradually, gradually, up to two years to come back where we were before the war.”
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