The effects of the exchange rate and economic growth on the energy imports in Turkey

Although the history of energy is as old as that of humanity, its role in economic activities became more substantial after the Industrial Revolution. The contribution of new discoveries in Europe in 18th and 19th centuries and the steam-running machines triggered Industrial Revolution and energy, whose significance increases throughout the process, became a scientific field along with the Oil Crisis in 1973. As of today, energy has become one of the fundamentals of development and improvement and is now demanded much more parallel with industrialization and population growth. The unbalanced distribution of energy resources on earth has caused the commercialization of energy input. For this reason, energy has commercial and strategic significance for both energy-supplying and demanding countries. Since energy, which determines the development levels of countries, is a serious financial cost for the economies, the adoption of energy politics by countries and the struggle for obtaining energy are increasing every day. Inevitable energy imports increase energy dependency when countries fail to meet energy demands of domestic energy sources, which in turn threaten political independence. The studies trying to reduce energy dependency in countries like Turkey with high energy dependency and to analyze things that promote energy imports are of crucial importance. In this study, real energy imports are examined in the framework of import function Johansen Co-integration Test and Vector Error Correction Model are used as the implementation method. In the study, real gross domestic product and the real effective exchange rate index were used as independent variables whereas total real energy imports dependent variable.