Turkey’s Geoeconomic Role and Political Narratives in the Black Sea Region
Shifting Allegiances, Story-Telling, and the Narrative of Values, Batumi, Gürcistan, 1 - 03 Mayıs 2026, ss.1, (Özet Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
- Basıldığı Şehir: Batumi
- Basıldığı Ülke: Gürcistan
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1
- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Turkey’s Geoeconomic Role and Political Narratives in the Black Sea Region
The Black Sea has been a central strategic and economic area for Türkiye, shaped by energy transit routes, pipeline infrastructure, and maritime governance regimes. However, the Russia-Ukraine war transformed the regional landscape, revealing the political limits of previously overlooked material capabilities. Increased militarization, rising geopolitical uncertainty, and the active implementation of the Montreux Convention have repositioned the Black Sea as a contested area where Türkiye's regional role must be constantly articulated and legitimized, rather than assumed. This article examines Türkiye's geo-economic position in the Black Sea from a critical geopolitical perspective, contending that regional influence is increasingly generated through narrative practices that utilize values as instruments for geopolitical legitimation. The literature on the Black Sea and Turkish foreign policy focuses on strategic interests, security concerns, or energy infrastructure. A Little attention has been paid to how values are narratively constructed and used to geo-economic roles in conditions of strategic uncertainty.
The study conceptualizes Türkiye's regional role through the interplay of material infrastructure, institutional authority, and political narratives. Within this framework, energy security, sovereignty, and regional stability function as context-dependent narrative sources where material assets, such as offshore gas production and pipeline projects, are involved. It examines how offshore gas production in the Sakarya Gas Field, pipeline projects TurkStream and TANAP, expanding LNG and storage capacities, and Türkiye’s legal authority under the Montreux Convention are embedded in narratives that portray a stable regional actor and a mediator between competing geopolitical blocs. The article argues that these material assets do not generate autonomous or stable geopolitical influence on their own. Türkiye resorts to value-laden narratives to manage the competitive pressures that arise from its relations with both Russia and NATO.