Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accumulated inaugurations and coups, three weeks before the hard-fought elections on May 14. The Turkish president offered his fellow citizens yesterday the forgiveness of domestic gas bills for the next twelve months. Quite a gift for the Id party, which today closes the month of Ramadan, for some, and further proof of electoralism and partisan use of national resources, according to the opposition.
The excuse to throw the house out of the window has been found by Erdogan in Sakarya, a field in Turkish waters of the Black Sea discovered a few years ago and which, opportunely, managed to be ready for the first supply of gas to the network this week. The politician, dressed in overalls from the public gas company, symbolically opened the stopcock yesterday. In reality, as the Minister of Energy, Fatih Dönmez, has acknowledged, "gas will not reach homes until next month."
“We are going to offer free natural gas for domestic use, in cookers and heaters, for next year,” Erdogan said at the new port facilities in Zonguldak province. The promise of free volume rises to 25 cubic meters per household per month. It would apparently exclude the consumption of central heating, much higher in winter.
Türkiye, like Spain, imports almost all the hydrocarbons it consumes. Although the bills are still much lower than in Spain, their amount has multiplied in the last year, generating discontent in a country where almost 40% of workers earn the minimum wage of 10,008 lire, barely 470 euros. Several financial observers also consider that the currency price is being maintained for political reasons and predict a severe depreciation once the elections are over.
Meanwhile, the Turkish government continues to expand its battery of social measures, including lowering the retirement age for certain groups, contrary to what Macron's France is doing.
Despite the Black Sea gas find and hopes of new discoveries in disputed Mediterranean waters, Turkey is a net importer. For example, it has become the first buyer of diesel from Russia, a country against which it does not apply sanctions. Like India or the United Arab Emirates, it also has a great capacity to re-export to third countries, including those that theoretically apply said sanctions.
The Sakarya gas field, now in operation, is the largest found in Turkish Black Sea waters, with 710 million cubic meters in reserves, although production will take four years to reach its peak. By then, Erdogan promises that he will cover a quarter of Turkey's needs.
