ABSTRACT
In 2015, after decade-long negotiations, Turkey joined the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E). Since then, its electricity currents roam freely in an expanded European territory that makes up the world’s largest electricity market. Two major blackouts finally impelled Turkey to join ENTSO-E. A physical blackout of March 2015 exposed how vulnerable Turkish electricity infrastructure was to oversupply, poor line management, and cyber-attacks. Ironically, the political “blackout” that Turkish-EU relations are currently undergoing encouraged some policymakers to strengthen infrastructural connections where political ones had failed. This chapter examines the relationship of electricity infrastructures to broader questions of power and integration in the wider European region. Probing low-carbon democratic imaginaries of energy development in Europe, it concludes that lessons learned from these two blackouts suggest that even if energy infrastructures might substitute for political integration between the centres and peripheries of Europe, contrary to system-builders’ expectations this infrastructural integration may not lead to the emergence of a mutually electrified common public.
