A Bridge between East and West: Turkey's natural gas policy

World energy demands have been increasing rapidly, so natural gas sources in the world play significant role in order to meet those demands. The fastest consumption growth rate of the world's primary energy sources belongs to natural gas; in addition, it has the highest consumption growth rate among the developing countries. Based on supply-demand models, declining domestic gas production in some regions will lead to a growing supply-demand gap. In fact industrial countries which are also the largest natural gas consumers will lose their key roles in the global natural gas supply in the next two decades. Middle East countries with considerable increase in gas production and due to their economical, political and geopolitical situations could be the best players in the future demand-supply scenarios. This paper deals with natural gas policy of Turkey as a bridge for energy to connect Europe to Asia and Middle East. Because of its geographical and strategic location, Turkey is in an important position to vary European countries supply. Therefore, Turkey's role for energy security of European Union has increased with current and planned natural gas pipelines that cross over Anatolia.