KİTAP İNCELEMESİ: Twisting in the Wind: The Politics of Tepid Transitions to Renewable Energy

Abstract

The book analyses the transition to renewable energy in Türkiye, which, according to the Bayulgen, is the country in the world that needs it the most to reduce its current account deficit, energy insecurity, and increasing environmental degradation. Chapter one is an introductory chapter and draws the general framework for the study. The main puzzle of the book is why renewable energy reforms stagnate over time despite favourable economic and technical conditions and why it is hard to increase renewable energy against fossil fuels. These questions are important to detect if the factors necessary to initiate pro-renewable policies are different from those that are necessary to sustain them. The Turkish case shows how governments can implement renewable energy reforms under external pressures to meet increasing energy demand without an ideological commitment to the environment. Therefore, clean energy reforms are not always motivated by societal demands. Once the reforms are enacted by the hand of a narrow governing circle more easily, more democracy is needed to sustain them to break the incumbent position of fossil fuel companies. Thus, the author claims that the drivers of initial reforms are crises, opportunistic elites, and concentration of power; while the drivers of sustainable reform are representative institutions and professional bureaucracy.

Keywords

Energy, Turkey

Citation

Serhan Ünal, “Oksan Bayülgen, Twisting in the Wind: The Politics of Tepid Transitions to Renewable Energy, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2022” Uluslararası İlişkiler, Advanced Online Publication, 24 December 2024, pp. 1-4.

Affiliations

Serhan ÜNAL Assistant Professor, Department of International Relations, National Defence University, Ankara E-Mail: [email protected] Orcid: 0000-0001-7587-1757