Guest editors' note.

• Author: Arinc, Ibrahim S.
• Position: On energy security - Column

Energy security, at the heart of energy policy, has become central to the dynamics of international relations. Political turmoil has overwhelmed many oil and gas producing countries, forcing them to adapt their national energy policies according to this continuous change. Specifically, because of the wars and instability in the Middle East and the Ukrainian crisis, global energy security is no longer guaranteed. One of the foremost experts on the energy industry, Daniel Yergin, identifies energy security as "the availability of sufficient supplies at affordable prices." He also comments that every country interprets the definition of energy security with its own dynamics. In practice, the definition of energy security is polysemic and the topic of energy security is being explored daily, under the lens of numerous new studies, by scholars, energy experts, government officials, activists, and journalists.

The dimensions of energy security are so broad that the conundrum of energy security is not only a subject of availability of energy at competitive prices, but a function of international geopolitical, environmental, social, economic, and technological constraints. A vast number of academic articles aim to examine and define energy security, and this is reflected in the literature. Among them, the article of And, Choong, and Ng titled "Energy Security: Definitions, Dimensions and Indexes," should be underlined. This article classifies definitions of energy security under seven titles: energy availability, infrastructure, energy prices, societal effects, environment, governance, and energy efficiency. Because of the multidimensional nature of energy security, more work should be directed at researching and developing this important topic in international relations.

In this special issue of Insight Turkey, we explore and dig deep into how energy security informs and shapes Turkey's energy policies. As stated above, Yergin assessed that every country has its own dynamics and conditions. Here, we focus on Turkey's energy security perceptions, its economic and geopolitical constraints as well as advantages, and how instability in the surrounding region impacts the future of Turkey's energy policies. Emphasis must be placed at the outset on the fact that Turkey is a net importer of energy, which makes its energy system heavily dependent on energy imports, and thus vulnerable to the political vagaries of its oil and gas producing commercial...