In Europe the anxiety is palpable and everyone is afraid of shortages and price increases. Many argue that the war in Ukraine plunged Europe into one of the biggest energy crises in its history. At this very critical moment, according to today’s articles in the Turkish press, Turkey appears as the only remaining route in the event of a disruption of shipments from Ukraine.

Turkish analysts report that the TurkStream pipeline, which consists of two lines with an annual capacity of 15.75 billion cubic meters, has supplied more than 40 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Turkey and more than 53 billion cubic meters to Europe. The same analysts point out that while Europe immediately reduced its consumption of Russian natural gas after the war in Ukraine, countries such as Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and some Balkan states still depend on Russian natural gas passing through Ukraine. Any suspension of natural gas flow from Ukraine would cause significant problems in these countries.

According to today’s Hurriyet, with major pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine now idled, Turkey is now emerging as the only safe alternative for transporting gas to Europe from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran, in case of interruption of shipments from Ukraine. The proposal to use the TurkStream pipeline was made today by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijaro at the International Natural Gas Forum in St. Petersburg, saying that this alternative route can help not only Hungary, but also other central European countries if they face a serious situation in case there is no transit through Ukraine.