Turkish Electricity Market: Steps Towards Liberalization

INTRODUCTION

Since 2001, Turkey has been in the process of liberalizing its electricity market. The ultimate purpose of this process is to create a fully liberalized system where the state acts only as a supervisory and regulatory authority instead of an investor in the market. Having a state monopoly in the electricity market for a long period of time, Turkey has made and still has to make considerable effort to achieve this ultimate purpose. In this respect, the state has to privatize its generation and distribution facilities and also ensure that new investments are made by private investors to create and maintain a balance between demand and supply of electricity.

This article will analyze Turkey's efforts to create a fully liberal electricity market. The below analysis consists of three sections. In the first section, the history of the Turkish electricity market and the liberalization efforts made before the enactment of the Electricity Market Law dated