Iran emerging as a new power in the region, Turkey should adapt to new order

Volkan Ediger, a professor of energy systems engineering who served as the energy adviser to three Turkish presidents between 1998 and 2010, has said the United States reached a deal with Iran in order to prevent a strategic alliance in the region between Russia, China and Iran and has urged Turkey to adapt to the “new order” in the Middle East that is in the making, especially in the field of energy.

Professor Ediger, who is currently strategy development and research coordinator at Kadir Has University, was the first energy adviser at the presidential palace during late President Süleyman Demirel’s term and also worked in the Çankaya Palace for Presidents Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Abdullah Gül. Talking to Sunday’s Zaman, Ediger elaborated on the shifting energy policies in the Middle East as a result of the rise of China’s energy needs, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) factor and his recommendations for Turkey’s policymakers.

According to Ediger, the primary motivation for the United States to strike a nuclear deal with Iran was to break up the parallel strategies of Russia, China and Iran in the Middle East, as seen by their common stance toward the Syria crisis. Ediger agrees with the argument that Iran is likely to benefit the most from the deal and will become the new power in the region. In response to a question over what the US has to gain, Ediger points out that as a result of the deal with Iran, there will be a decline in energy dependence on Russia for Europe and the deal will also prevent the gap created by the US in the region from being filled by its competitors such as Russia and China.

Iran has the largest natural gas reserves in the world — 18 percent of the world’s resources. Yet, as Ediger says, due to the embargo, it only has a 4.9 percent share of production. When the embargo is lifted after the nuclear deal, Iran will export more energy and Russia will be hurt, Ediger argues. Is a stronger Iran not a threat to the US? “The US could contain Iran more easily than Russia,” Ediger responds, calling Russia the “king of natural gas.”

“Putin does not hesitate to use energy as a weapon,” Ediger comments, adding that the world was not able to do much when Russia took over Crimea. According to him, Russia is one of the biggest threats to the United States given its dominance on energy production, as seen by the establishment of the gas-OPEC (officially known as the Gas Exporting Countries Forum [GECF]) with Iran.

Turkey should change its Syria policy, revisit relations with Iran

According to Ediger, given such a backdrop, while the Middle East is being redesigned, Turkey has been late to develop a strategy. He urges Turkey to set aside nationalist or sectarian priorities and focus on its economic interests in the region. Calling Turkey and Iran both historic friends and rivals, Ediger admits the difficulty of forming a balance but calls on Turkish policymakers to take advantage of the new energy situation in the region. “We should not assume that Iran would transmit gas through Turkey and develop an economy based relationship,” Ediger says, noting how the abundant energy resources of Iran contrast with Turkey’s need for energy. For him, Iran, has become a model country in the region, replacing Turkey.

For the first time in 110 years, US is not the biggest energy consumer

When asked about what has been changing in the world and in the Middle East in terms of energy issues, Ediger prefers to provide a historical account dating back to the emergence of the US as the global hegemon in the 1900s, replacing the United Kingdom. “Being the hegemon requires having control over the most important energy source of the time,” Ediger states, mentioning a shift first from coal to oil and now to gas in the world.

Although he rules out exceptions such as Qatar, Ediger directs attention to the strong correlation between GDP per capita and energy consumption. According to him, the country that consumes the most energy is likely to be the strongest power since the biggest client in the market can dominate policies. As a result, for Ediger 2010 marked an important shift. In 1901, the US replaced the United Kingdom in energy consumption. In 2010, for the first time China passed the US in energy consumption, which is alarming enough for US hegemony. “The center of economic gravity has shifted to China,” Ediger said to explain the US withdrawal from the Middle East. According to him, the US does not want to focus on the Middle East anymore since its priority has moved to the East China Sea. When asked whether the US withdrew from Iraq due to its failure, Ediger disagreed, saying that thanks to the investment of US oil companies in Iraq, the US already took what it wanted and compensated its economic losses in Iraq.

Ediger tends to explain all political decisions through economic parameters and energy relations. He tells how the US has been trying to tackle its declining hegemony in energy by developing shale gas technology to increase domestic production. Currently, the US provides 60 percent of its energy from domestic sources, which makes it less dependent compared to the 1970s. However, when domestic oil production declined in the US in 2000, the administration of then-President George W. Bush searched for ways to diversify its energy supply. While the Energy Task Force, officially the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), was established in 2001 by Bush under Dick Cheney’s leadership, the US even sought cooperation with Russia. Ediger states that another US strategy to increase production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) failed due to the reaction of environmentalists at home.

Similarly, rather than seeing the European Union as a project that was started to avoid another catastrophe like World War II, Ediger argues that the seed of the EU, the European Coal and Steel Community, was an attempt to counter the US decision to establish a new order based on oil instead of coal.

ISIL is an instrument that protects Western interests

When asked whether he believes ISIL is a project, as many conspiracy theories in the region say, Ediger replies that “none of us can know the real nature of ISIL,” while calling it a successfully organized instrument.

From his perspective, ISIL, a well-organized and highly professional organization, is an international instrument to help to set the new order in the greater Middle East area. According to Ediger, ISIL is a realization of Western smart power to protect its own interests in the region by using regional dynamics. Ediger believes that the US does not want any other powers, such as Russia and China, to replace it in the Middle East after its withdrawal.

Ediger finds it interesting that ISIL does not destroy any large oil fields or facilities, while only taking control of small ones. However, he says that making $3.5 million from oil per day should be enough for ISIL to function. In reference to Western media reports, Ediger says that in Iraq, ISIL produces 30,000 barrels of oil in a day, while this number rises to 50,000 in Syria. He does not rule out the possibility that this oil is sold to Turkish and Kurdish smugglers that have historically done cross-border smuggling.

PROFILE

After graduating from the Geological Engineering Department of Middle East Technical University (METU) in 1976, he went on to receive his MS degree from the same university and his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University (PSU).

His industrial experience was gained primarily at the research center of the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO), where he initiated and coordinated several R&D projects mainly on oil and gas exploration and production. Between 1998 and 2010, he was the first person to hold the newly created position of energy advisor to the president of Turkey, where he had the chance to work with three successive presidents. He started his academic career at METU and continued both there and at PSU. Ediger received his professorship at İzmir University of Economics in 2010. He is currently the head of the Energy Systems Engineering Department, director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development and coordinator of strategy development and research at Kadir Has University and also serves in several committees and commissions.

He is the founder and president of the Energy and Climate Change Foundation and a founder of the executive committee of the Sustainable Production and Consumption Association, the first NGOs to work in this field in Turkey. He recently served as the general chair of ICE 2014, which was held by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) in September 2014 in İstanbul and the 5th Multinational Energy and Value Conference, which was held in İstanbul in May 2015.