How Green and Just? Transition to Renewable Energy in Turkey

Abstract

This study examines the transition to renewable energy in Turkey under the AKP government. It seeks to explore from a political ecology perspective to what extent this transition was just and green. Taking into account the broader political economic structure and associated power relations, it demonstrates that the main driving force behind this transition is not green energy production, but to open new natural resources and areas to capital accumulation within the framework of the AKP government’s recently formulated economic policies. The study also shows how mainstream green discourse serves the AKP in legitimizing the opening up of new elements of nature to an exploitative form of renewable energy development that is neither fair nor green. Analysis of the Turkish case thus shows how new environmental and social crises could arise from the “green” transition advocated by the mainstream green discourse.