Turkey to move towards renewable energyexc

6 June 2014
By Oguzhan Ozsoy and Bahattin Gonultas
Source: developing8.org

Turkey aims to upscale renewables by 30 percent by 2023 with the second fastest rise in demand for energy in the world after China

Turkey looks to renewable energy as an alternative source to relieve its dependency on foreign energy and fossil fuel resources such as oil, gas and coal, according to experts.

Turkey is second in the world after China in terms of its rising energy demand, and consequently the country aims to upscale renewables by 30 percent by 2023.

Turkey generated 45 percent of its electricity from natural gas, 25 percent from coal, 25 percent from hydro-power and 3 percent produced by wind power plants in 2013. 

Turkey consumed 245.5 billion kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity in 2013 and Turkey’s total electricity consumption for 2014 is estimated to be 256 billion kilowatt-hour (kWh), an increase of 4.1 percent compared to last year, according to the Turkish Electricity Production Company (TEIAS). 

Turkey meets half of its electricity needs from fossil fuels - 32 percent from coal and 23 percent from natural gas.

According to the study from the country's Energy Ministry, Turkey's electricity demand will reach 620 billion kilowatt per hour.

Turkey will generate 15 percent of its electricity from hydropower, 12 percent from wind and geothermal power, 11 percent from nuclear energy, 5 percent from solar power and 2 percent from others by 2030, according to the ministry.

Solar Energy Industrialists Association (GENSED) Professor Sener Oktik, said "Clean energy is the guarantee of our future energy needs and our environment," and he claimed that solar power will expand into the world’s biggest source of energy before the next century.

"Solar power will dominate, making up almost 37 percent of all energy supplies, with oil providing 10 percent, wind power 8 percent and natural gas 7 percent by 2100," said Oktik.

He also said the photovoltaics sector, which is a method of generating power by converting solar radiation into direct electricity current using semiconductors that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, is rapidly emerging in the Asia pacific region.

Turkish Wind Energy Association (TUREB) President Mustafa Serdar Ataseven said, "If Turkey increases the number of wind power plants, this could be reflected in lower energy costs for citizens because we use our own local resources, with no payment required for the energy sources and no gas emissions from wind power."

"Turkey has energy sources that are environmentally friendly. We need to work together to use these resources very effectively," Ataseven said.

Ataseven stated that energy imports to Turkey are very expensive. "Imports make the country dependent on foreign sources. We need to produce our energy locally without damaging our environment," he added. 

Turkey's wind energy has a 3,000 megawatt (MW) production capacity and will reach 4,000 MW levels by the end of the year.

Source: Anadolu Agency

 

Link:http://developing8.org/Latestnews.aspx?NewsTitle=Turkey%20to%20move%20towards%20renewable%20energyexc.

 

Foreign companies in Turkey face squeeze

February 25, 2014
By Tom Bergin and Michael Shields
Source: Yahoo News

LONDON/VIENNA (Reuters) - Foreign companies in Turkey are beginning to feel the effects of a sagging currency, rising inflation and a growing political power struggle, adding to fears the country may not be the source of future growth that some companies had hoped.

As Western companies unveiled their 2013 results in recent weeks, most of those with operations in Turkey said they were committed to continuing to invest in the country. However, many acknowledged bumps in their performance there.

Like other developing economies, Turkey has been battered in recent months by U.S. Federal Reserve plans to reduce its monetary stimulus. This had allowed financial investors to borrow cheaply in the United States and invest in high yielding securities in faster growing, lesser developed economies.

But Turkey has been hit particularly badly by a power struggle between Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and an Islamic cleric he accuses of concocting a corruption scandal in an attempt to undermine him.

The corruption scandal along with rising inflation and sustained falls in the lira have prompted rating agencies to cut their outlook for Turkey and warn there could be a hard economic landing.

Companies are watching the fallout closely.

U.S. carmaker Ford and German auto parts maker ElringKlinger, which have plants in the country, said the drop in the lira was eating into earnings. Foreign owned factories rely heavily on foreign-made components and the weak lira is pushing up the price of these.

British mobile phone group Vodafone said revenue growth at its Turkish unit dropped almost 80 percent in the last quarter of 2013, compared to the same period of 2012, due to a mix of tougher regulation and price pressure.

Austrian oil group OMV, which is among the most reliant on Turkey for earnings of all the foreign investors there said the economic volatility was challenging the very profitability of its Petrol Ofisi filling station and lubricants unit.

Joe Kaeser, Chief Executive of German engineering group, Siemens, told investors in late January that his perception of Turkey had shifted from being a market that was "peachy" for businesses that sell infrastructure, energy and healthcare equipment, to one where he now grouped the country among riskier plays like Ukraine.

"If you had asked me a year ago or two years ago about Turkey, I would have told you this is the place to be," he said on an investor call.

"In the meantime we do see that those geopolitical impacts have been spreading uncertainty also into the economic development," he added.

BUOYANT MESSAGES

Turkey has enjoyed strong economic growth since Erdogan came to power in 2002.

This and trade agreements with the European Union helped make the country a magnet for European manufacturers which wanted to access cheap labor, or consumer goods groups which wanted to participate in an increasingly valuable market.

While the current instability is prompting some companies to tighten risk management - BASF said it was reducing working capital so that less cash was tied up in Turkey - none of the more than a dozen companies contacted by Reuters said they had plans to scale back investment.

"We monitor the situation daily but in the medium term we remain positive and ready to invest," UniCredit's CEO Federico Ghizzoni said earlier this month. He added the bank planned to hire 2,000 people and open 60 branches in Turkey this year.

Kasper Rorsted, CEO of detergent maker Henkel, which is building a factory in Turkey, said while the weaker lira did force his company to cut prices, such fluctuations were common in emerging markets and that his eye remained on the long term.

"The high inflation you right now have in Turkey with a big devaluation of the Turkish lira … you have to deal with it," said in a television interview with Reuters Insider.

European companies' commitment to Turkey is partly thanks stagnant markets at home, analysts say.

But the view that Turkey is experiencing a temporary blip and that growth and demand will recover to the vigorous levels seen in the 2000s is too optimistic, said Fadi Hakura, Head of Turkey Project at think tank Chatham House.

"Turkey has entered the middle income trap. Without fundamental reform, such as upgrading its institutions for governance and its human capital (through better education), Turkey will likely see growth of only 2 to 4 percent over the long term," he said, adding the country enjoyed around 5.2 percent growth since 2002.
Hakura said such fundamental reform currently looked unlikely and consequently, the authorities were likely to continue to rely on existing measures such as higher interest rates and lending restrictions to tackle the country's balance of payments problems.

Such measures are bad news for companies seeking to tap the Turkish consumer.

"Consumer based businesses will not likely enjoy the same revenues and profits in the future that they have experienced over the last decade," Hakura said.

(Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan, Maria Sheahan and Frank Siebelt in Frankfurt, Nicholas Tattersall and Alsi Kandemir in Istanbul, James Davey and Paul Sandle in London, Silvia Aloisi, Danilo Masoni and Isla Binnie, Milan, Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels, Tom Kaeckenhoff in Duesseldorf)

Turkey signs $3.5 bln deal for Sikorsky helicopters

February 21, 2014 
By Seda Sezer and Andrea Shalal 
Source:  Yahoo Finance

Feb 21 (Reuters) - Turkey signed a deal worth $3.5 billion on Friday to buy helicopters from United Technologies Corp's Sikorsky Aircraft unit, finalizing an order originally agreed upon in 2011, the prime minister said.

The agreement includes options that analysts say could result in billions of dollars of additional orders over the next three decades.

The 109 helicopters, a version of Sikorsky's popular Black Hawk, will be assembled in Turkey. The main contractor is Turkish Aerospace Industries with components to be supplied by Sikorsky, Aselsan and other Turkish companies.

Sikorsky said the deal marked the start of an important partnership with Turkish industry.

"Turkey is such an important market in terms of being a large customer, and it is also strategically important in terms of who they are in the world," Sikorsky President Mick Maurer said in a telephone interview.

He said the agreement would allow Turkish industry to develop the capability to produce nearly every part of the helicopter, including a newly designed Turkish cockpit.

Maurer declined to give many details about the new agreement but said it would give his company a second source for many of the helicopter's components.

He said Sikorsky would work with Turkey to market the international version of the Black Hawk in other countries, leveraging Turkey's existing relationships in those areas and generating additional orders for Turkish suppliers.

"We're going out arm in arm, as we bring in other sales outside of Turkey that will be supplied by the new supply chain," Maurer said.

Maurer said the company expected continued demand for the helicopter in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Even if the co-marketing efforts do not pan out, the deal still gives Sikorsky access to "one of the biggest export helicopter markets in the world," said aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia. "Turkey has requirements that go way beyond these numbers," he said.

Virginia-based defense consultant Jim McAleese said the deal would help Sikorsky weather a downturn in U.S. helicopter orders and underscored the "franchise value" of the company just weeks after speculation that United Technologies could spin it off as a low-value asset.

"This could not have come at a better time," McAleese said.

Despite the deal, Sikorsky on Friday announced it would begin laying off 600 workers in coming weeks, citing continued "challenging and unstable economic conditions."

Sam Mehta, president of Sikorsky's Defense Systems and Services division, said the deal marked the start of a 30-year relationship, and included options for a wide range of Turkish government agencies to buy versions of the helicopter.

It also opened opportunities for servicing and repairing the helicopters, he said.

Link:  http://finance.yahoo.com/news/turkey-signs-3-5-bln-002523659.html.

Turkey Promises Orthodox Policy at Private Central Bank Meeting

Feb 19, 2014
By Onur Ant
Source: Bloomberg News

Turkey’s central bank promised economists that its policy is becoming simpler and more predictable, according to two people who attended a private meeting in Ankara today.

Deputy Governor Mehmet Yorukoglu and Abdullah Yavas, a member of the monetary policy committee, told the economists that the bank is moving toward a more orthodox policy where the benchmark one-week repurchase rate will be the main instrument for funding banks, according to Bora Tamer Yilmaz of Ziraat Investment and Inanc Sozer of Odeabank AS, who were at the meeting.

“Bank officials said that they wanted their policies to be viewed as more orthodox and more predictable,” Yilmaz said.

Turkey’s central bank developed an interest-rate corridor since 2010 that allowed it to vary monetary conditions on a daily basis. Critics said the system was over-complicated, and called it a way of circumventing political opposition to higher rates. The bank reversed course last month, raising all its main rates at an emergency meeting as it sought to stem a plunge in the lira.

The bank will keep policy tight until it’s confident that inflation, which was 7.8 percent last month, is slowing toward the target of 5 percent by mid-2015, Sozer said.

The move toward orthodoxy suggests the rates corridor will be symmetrical, with the overnight lending and borrowing rates that mark its boundary at an equal distance from the benchmark, Yilmaz said.

Link:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-19/turkey-promises-orthodox-policy-at-private-central-bank-meeting.html?cmpid=yhoo.
 

Halkbank Profit Beats Estimates After Former CEO’s Arrest

Feb 18, 2014 
By Isobel Finkel
Source: Bloomberg News

Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS (HALKB) reported full-year profit that beat estimates, two months after the Turkish lender’s chief executive officer was arrested amid a corruption probe.
Net income rose to 2.75 billion liras ($1.3 billion) from 2.6 billion liras in 2012, the Istanbul-based lender said in a stock exchange filing today. That beat the 2.7 billion-lira estimate of 22 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Halkbank stock has dropped 24 percent in Istanbul trading since former CEO Suleyman Aslan was arrested on Dec. 17 after police found $4.5 million in shoe boxes at his home. His lawyer has said the money was charitable donations Aslan had gathered to build Islamic schools in Turkey and Macedonia. Aslan is awaiting trial.

Ali Fuat Taskesenlioglu, who was named CEO earlier this month, made no mention of his predecessor in yesterday’s statement. Instead, he commented on how Halkbank will work toward Turkey’s “2023 vision” by supporting the import and export activities of small and medium-sized Turkish companies. The year 2023 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic and is a symbolic date for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development party.

Shares Unchanged

Halkbank fell 0.4 percent to 11.95 liras as of 3:16 p.m. in Istanbul trading.

“While earnings exceeded our forecast, the quality was weak,” Duygun Kutucu, an analyst at Burgan Yatirim Menkul Degerler AS, said in an e-mailed report. “The decline in the loan-deposit spread and the below-sector fee growth signify a mediocre operating performance.”

Halkbank’s cost of deposits in the fourth quarter increased 50 basis points to 4.8 percent from the third quarter, its earnings presentation showed. The yield it receives on loans remained at 9.4 percent, down from 11.3 percent in the year-earlier period. The lender’s loan-to-deposit ratio was 84 percent, which Elvan Oztabak, head of investor relations, described as a “comfortable level” compared with the industry average of 111 percent.

Deputy General Manager Mehmet Hakan Atilla said on a conference call with reporters the bank hired three external auditors to review its transactions and compliance procedures. “None of them submitted any negative findings or notices,” he said.

Halkbank’s fourth-quarter net income was 741 million liras, little changed from a year-earlier and beating the 682 million-lira mean estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Earnings have been better than analysts’ estimates for at least the past eight quarters.

Link:   http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-17/halkbank-profit-beats-estimates-following-former-ceo-s-arrest.html?cmpid=yhoo.

Turkey's Halkbank denies wrongdoing in Iran deals

December 23, 2013
Source: Yahoo News

Istanbul (AFP) - Turkey's state-owned Halkbank, whose chief executive was arrested in connection with a sweeping graft investigation, said on Monday it complied with the law when doing business with sanctions-hit Iran. 

"Our bank's business transactions are regularly audited by relevant authorities," the bank said in a statement

.

"The financial intermediation that our bank offers with regard to trade activities with Iran have been conducted in accordance with regulations," it added. 

The statement comes after Halkbank chief executive Suleyman Aslan was charged Saturday with taking bribes, while Azerbaijani businessman Reza Zarrab was charged with forming a ring that bribed officials to help disguise illegal gold sales to Iran via Halkbank.

Police had also reportedly found $4.5 million in cash stored in shoe boxes in Aslan's home.

Twenty-four people have been charged so far in connection with the high-profile investigation including the sons of Interior Minister Muarrem Guler and Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan as well as several top business leaders. 

On Saturday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended Halkbank which he claimed was targeted by international plotters. 

"We have raised the bank's market value to $25 billion. They are targeting this successful state bank," he said. "This bank is intimidating Turkey's enemies."

Halkbank has come under fire from some quarters in the United States for alleged illegal transactions to Iran.

The bank said it stopped transactions to Iran as of June 10 after the United States announced further sanctions against the Islamic republic. 

Several pro-government media outlets claimed over the weekend that US ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone told some European Union ambassadors that Washington asked the bank to cut its ties with Iran -- the allegations vehemently denied by the ambassador. 

The reports however infuriated the prime minister who warned he may expel some foreign ambassadors over "provocative actions", in remarks considered a veiled threat to Ricciardone.

Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan said Sunday that Halkbank has lost $1.6 billion in market value since the scandal broke out and branded the investigation as an operation aimed at undermining Turkey's economic stability.

How Turkey’s chaos has undercut Kurdish and Israeli oil and gas ambitions

3 hours ago
By Steve LeVine | Quartz
Source: Yahoo Finance

Until a few days ago, there seemed to be an inexorable reordering of two major swaths of the Middle East. The region’s Kurds seemed on the cusp of achieving greater political autonomy, and Israel appeared to be at least potentially on its way to obtaining an export pipeline for its natural gas. But Turkey’s now five-day-old protests—which intensified today when unionized public workers called an anti-government strike—seem likely to disrupt both of these trends.

The reason: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the target of the demonstrators, is an architect and an essential political actor in both the Kurdish and Israeli shakeups, part of a strategy of expanding Turkey’s influence abroad. But rather than pushing along these aims, Erdogan seems bound to spend weeks or months distracted by domestic unrest, which also threatens his ambitionto change the constitution and win re-election as president next year.

Erdogan’s Kurdish initiative first attracted attention in April 2011, when he visited Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. He was two years into a campaign to finally resolve a long, bloody conflict with Turkey’s own Kurdish population, which made the Erbil visit—the first of any senior Turkish leader to the northern Iraqi province—highly emotive. For decades, much of the region—Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey—had violently suppressed its restive Kurdish populations. Now Turkey was expressing sympathy for the cultural and political freedoms that the Kurds had long sought.

Just six months later, the Iraqi Kurds signed an oil exploration deal (paywall) with ExxonMobil. Together with Erdogan’s visit, the agreement stirred regional politics: Defying the wishes of Baghdad, Turkey and Exxon would help the Iraqi Kurds establish economic independence, starting with the construction of direct oil and natural gas pipelines. The agreement with the Iraqi Kurds also involved an Erdogan truce with the PKK, the militant Kurdish movement in Turkey.

Two years later, on May 14 of this year, Erdogan announced that Turkey’s state-oil company itself would partner with Exxon in the Kurdistan deal. That put Turkey’s economic benefit at the center of Iraqi Kurdistan’s objective to pull away from Baghdad.

The protests in Istanbul’s Taksim Square only weeks later have not yet focused on Erdogan’s foreign policy, apart from voicing the national resentment over his support for Syrian rebels. But Ross Wilson, former US ambassador to Turkey and now head of the Eurasian division of the Atlantic Council, says they nonetheless undercut both Erdogan’s reconciliation with Turkish Kurds and the oil developments in Iraqi Kurdistan.

ExxonMobil declined to comment. But in Iraq, Erdogan’s high-stakes policy flouts both Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Washington, who have warned the Turkish leader to stop backing the Kurds. That makes him a necessary general without whose authority the delicate process will likely stall. His approval is required in particular to push forward the planned construction of dedicated oil and gas pipelines to Turkey, the key to monetizing Iraqi Kurdistan’s natural resources.

“In order to export substantial quantities of oil, the Iraqi Kurds need the acquiescence of Turkish authorities,” Wilson said. “The pipelines are on hold and will remain on hold.”

Similarly, there seems little chance of progress on the idea of building a natural gas pipeline from rich offshore Israeli fields to the Turkish market.

Israel’s eastern Mediterranean fields have the equivalent of 5 billion barrels of oil, sufficient to provide the country energy security for decades, along with a robust flow of export earnings. Butwithout Turkey the gas may be bottled up: Experts say that proposed alternatives, including an undersea pipeline to Greece and a liquefied natural gas facility, are too expensive.

But the proposed pipeline had been stalled by Erdogan, who broke off relations with Israel over its 2010 raid on a Turkish flotilla to Gaza that left nine people dead. Erdogan had been demanding an apology as a condition of reopening relations between the two countries. In March, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called Erdogan with the apology.

Since then, the two countries have been in talks over reparations, another required step before pushing forward with fully restored relations and movement on the proposed pipeline. But with Erdogan’s attention now focused on Taksim, Israel has no one of decisive authority on the Turkish side to advance the reparations discussion, or the pipeline plans.