An empirical study on the effects of the strategic developments in international energy and transport corridors on Turkey's maritime trade

The need for more energy sources to have strong economy and therefore to produce more energy makes energy and transportation corridors more important in the context of energy policies. In the course of such pursue, shipping has gained strategically importance in terms of transit nodes as well as appreciably functional links of pipelines with ports/terminals. Taking into consideration the above mentioned developments, this exploratory and partially descriptive empirical research mainly aims to make contributions to the efforts to reveal the overall effects of the said strategic developments focused on international energy and transport corridors on Turkish seaborne trade. A content analysis was carried out regarding the reflections of the relevant strategic developments on Turkey trade making use of thorough literature review over international energy and transport corridors as well as international energy industry. Then, two different delphi research focused on the effects of the developments on the Turkish seaborne trade. At the last step, hypotheses were developed in accordance with the results of the content analyses and the delphi research. Thorough these hypotheses, to test the data gained from previously made researches, factor analyses and also multivariable variance analyses based on the factor analyses have been carried out. The overall results of the research reveal that the strategic developments regarding the international energy and transport corridors place certain effects on Turkish seaborne trade particularly in terms of increasing the roles of ports in energy transports, making Ceyhan an important energy hub/terminal, providing diverse sources in energy imports, increasing energy effectiveness/efficiency, strengthening Turkish seaborne fleet, targeting cheaper and lower risky means of shipping, recovering RD (research and development) problems in shipping, increasing LNG imports, minimizing environmental safety risks and completing the infrastructural needs for the Turkish Straits. The overall results point to the fact that the only means of access, for Turkey, to effective international energy and transport corridors is to maintain a sound and strong seaborne trade structure. Keywords: Energy and Transport Corridors, Seaborne Trade, Geostrategy, Energy Strategy, Turkey.