“The most eastern of the West, the most western of the East”: Energy‐transport infrastructures and regional politics of the periphery in Turkey

Abstract

The construction of railroads, highways, pipelines, tunnels, and bridges is a result of an imagined construction of regions and in return helps solidify such imaginations. Critics of the role of technological advancement in fostering social, economic, political, and cultural integration between centers and peripheries argue that many such projects remain as political dreamscapes instead of serving as successful examples of transregional integration. Nevertheless, new political dreamscapes give way to new client networks from the European peripheries, solidified by real material networks of energy and transport. Currently promoting itself as a bridge and energy hub between Europe and Asia, Turkey champions such infrastructural developmentalism. This article examines how some political dreamscapes of energy-transport infrastructures, which are imagined to connect Eurasia to Europe via Turkey, relate to their actual construction. At a time when hopes for Turkey's political integration with its surrounding regions have waned, I critically interrogate whether economic integration by means of material infrastructures for energy and transport can substitute for political forms of integration. Keywords Energy; Infrastructure; Regionalism; Transport; TurkeyThe construction of railroads, highways, pipelines, tunnels, and bridges may arise from a specific imagination of integrated or networked regions. They may also create or intensify real regional networks and integration-albeit often in nonlinear, contradictory ways. Currently promoting itself as a bridge and energy hub between Europe, Asia, and the Levant, the Turkish government champions infrastructural integration to further its position as strong trade partner and political ally of states in these regions. Turkey's economic and politicocultural policies toward former Soviet "Turkic" Republics, its imperial history in the Middle East and North Africa, and, more recently, its pending membership in the European Union (EU) are seen by political and economic elites from the greater region as opportunities. Nevertheless, as in imperial, colonial, and modernizing times alike, tensions and conflicts are inherent in infrastructural regionalism as a project, not the least because infrastructure development is seen both as an all-inclusive solution and as an all-pervading problem (Edwards et al. 2009:365). This article looks into infrastructural regionalism, or region building by means of infrastructural development projects, in Turkey, where large-scale infrastructures currently mediate the exchange of energy commodities (human labor and fossil fuels) between sources from its East and markets to its West.The study of infrastructure is important from an anthropological perspective because infrastructure materializes energy flows in ways that make power struggles and economic inequalities apparent. Here I explore several energy-transport infrastructure projects, including one subsea tunnel and several pipelines, which I take as materialized power, to chart region-building effor...

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