Turkey's Nuclear Future

INTRODUCTION

WHY TURKEY?

SINAN ÜLGEN

In regions where nuclear weapons are deployed and pressing security dilemmas exist, states’ nuclear policies often have, or could have, multiple dimensions. States in such circumstances may have civilian nuclear programs to provide energy or isotopes for medical and agricultural purposes. These civilian programs may be active and ambitious, or fledgling and focused on research and development. States in challenging security environments may also pursue military nuclear policies to deter potential adversaries. These policies may focus on alliance relationships whereby some states produce and control nuclear weapons, extending deterrence on behalf of their allies, which in turn may share responsibility by hosting nuclear weapons and participating in alliance policy planning. Or, states may seek to develop the option to produce their own nuclear weapons in the future, albeit with great complication due to the constraints that apply to parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

The trajectories of states’ nuclear policies sometimes are uncertain. A civilian nuclear program may always remain purely peaceful and thus not merge into a military nuclear program. Or, what began as a civilian program could alter its trajectory and become part of a policy to acquire a nuclear deterrent. Between these two trajectories, a state may seek a hedge by acquiring some dual-use capabilities that are not excluded for non-nuclear-weapon states under the NPT, without deciding to build nuclear weapons. Since 1970 when the NPT entered into force, only Libya, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and possibly Syria have deviated from their obligations as parties to the treaty and sought to develop nuclear weapons.1 The nuclear programs in Iraq, North Korea, and Iran began, at least ostensibly, as civilian efforts and were diverted to military purposes.

If a state decides to acquire its own nuclear weapons—as distinct from relying on an extended deterrent provided by an ally or allies—it will need a significant array of nuclear expertise and technological capabilities. Given that all non-nuclear-weapon states today are parties to the NPT, a state wanting to acquire nuclear weapons would probably seek to develop the necessary expertise and technical resources under the guise of a peaceful civilian nuclear program. To do otherwise—to abruptly undertake a crash nuclear-weapon program—would trigger alarms and countervailing action by the international community that would pose extreme risks to such a state. Alternatively, to seek to procure nuclear weapons from another state would pose other risks, and to be feasible would also require the prior development of expertise and infrastructure to make use of procured weapons and maintain them safely. Thus, an extensive civilian nuclear program, including the capacity to enrich uranium and/or extract plutonium from spent fuel, would appear necessary as a precursor for acquiring nuclear weapons. Such a program, in turn, would signal defenders of the nuclear nonproliferation regime to cast a wary eye.

Turkey exists in a nuclearized environment fraught with security dilemmas. Indeed, Turkey hosts several American nuclear bombs on its territory as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) deterrent. Along Turkey’s southern border, Iraq had a major clandestine nuclear weapon program, Syria had a secretly under-construction plutonium production reactor, and Iran has been detected violating its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguard obligations and conducting nuclear-related activities with possible military dimensions. Two of these neighbors, Syria and Iraq, have used chemical weapons in conflict, and Iran is believed to have the capacity to produce both chemical and biological weapons.

Turkey is a non-nuclear-weapon state in good standing under the NPT, with a robust civilian research and development program and extensive plans to host nuclear power plants on its territory. These plans call for established nuclear reactor vendors to build and operate plants in Turkey for many years before transferring them to Turkish operators who will gain the necessary expertise and experience in the intervening period. Turkey also wants to take advantage of its foray into nuclear energy to develop its own technological capacity. So Ankara has been interested in the transfer of nuclear technology and has not ruled out an interest in developing an indigenous capability to enrich uranium. All of this reasonably fits the profile of an advancing state and society with a robust modern economy whose need for diversely supplied electricity will grow significantly.

The trajectory of Turkey’s nuclear energy policies and capabilities may never divert from a purely civilian course. But, noting the security environment in which Turkey lives, and the uncertain evolution of NATO and U.S. security guarantees, Turks and some international observers naturally speculate on the possibility that someday military-security considerations could cause the trajectory of Turkey’s nuclear program to veer toward an altered line of Turkish security policy.

This book begins by describing the current status and trajectory of Turkey’s civilian nuclear policy and program. In almost all countries, and in much of the international media, projections of the growth of nuclear energy prove vastly exaggerated. This is natural: proponents, including vendors, have incentives to understate the total costs of nuclear power plants and related infrastructure and the time it takes to construct them. Politicians and reporters not well-versed in the complicated realities of nuclear energy often do not know how to scrutinize such claims.

The first chapter by Gürkan Kumbaroğlu offers a welcome corrective by providing a historically informed, balanced, and incisive analysis of Turkey’s burgeoning nuclear power program. Kumbaroğlu underscores the need for nuclear power by drawing attention to the high and continuing demand for electricity generated by a growing economy and a large manufacturing sector. He also analyzes the economics of the country’s first nuclear power plant to be built by Rosatom in Akkuyu on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. He concludes, after reviewing different risk categories, that the unique Build-Operate-Own investment model appears to be economically advantageous for Turkey with the predetermined average purchasing price of electricity from the nuclear power plant being significantly lower than today’s average electricity wholesale price in Turkey.

In the second chapter, İzak Atiyas focuses on the state of play regarding the regulation of nuclear power in Turkey. He seeks to set out the desirable features of a regulatory framework to ensure the safety of nuclear energy in Turkey. Atiyas maintains that the quality of the regulatory framework is closely related to the degree of independence and to the extent to which mechanisms ensuring transparency and accountability are in place. He states that the current regulatory authority, and the regulatory framework in general, does not yet satisfy the requirements of independence, transparency, and accountability. Looking ahead, he asserts that Turkey is faced with two important and highly interrelated tasks. One is that Turkey needs to complete the legislative infrastructure for nuclear energy. The other task is highly political in nature as it requires the political authority to delegate substantial power to an independent authority.

The third chapter by Doruk Ergun can be seen as an introduction to the strategic dimension of the debate on nuclear policy. In this chapter, Ergun reviews Turkey’s security strategy since the end of World War II and provides a context for the discussion of the role of nuclear weapons in Turkey’s security strategy. He examines the evolution of NATO’s nuclear deterrence and the role of forward-deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. He then analyzes the post–Cold War security environment and proliferation threats surrounding Turkey and sets out Ankara’s response to the perceived regional threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Ergun concludes by stating that although Turkey continues to be faced with other asymmetric and conventional threats both within and beyond its borders, Ankara will not risk the diplomatic, political, economic, and military fallout from seeking nuclear weapons unless it is convinced that NATO security guarantees have completely eroded and that Turkey is compelled to fend for itself.

In the fourth chapter, Can Kasapoğlu provides the backdrop for Turkey’s strategic thinking on the role of tactical nuclear weapons. He remarks that Turkey’s nuclear stance within NATO has generally been seen through the prism of national prestige and the consolidation of North Atlantic security ties. He maintains, however, that deeper insight into the Turkish case and Ankara’s delicate military strategic balance in its hinterland with respect to strategic weapon systems uncovers a more complex rationale beyond the generally accepted motive of commitment to NATO’s burden sharing and nuclear posture. Kasapoğlu argues that the positioning of NATO tactical nuclear capabilities on Turkish soil has more than a symbolic meaning for Ankara and that Turkey’s nuclear stance within NATO is linked to threat perceptions emanating from strategic weapons proliferation in the Middle East.

In the fifth chapter, Aaron Stein reviews Turkey’s efforts to improve its defensive and offensive capabilities against the threat of WMD. Stein argues that Ankara has expressed a sustained interest in procuring offensive and defensive missile systems that are intended to work together to augment Turkey’s capabilities to target asymmetric threats and to bolster the country’s defense against a ballistic missile attack. He indicates that Turkey is pursuing ballistic and cruise missiles and is eager to complement these capabilities with a robust intelligence-gathering capability that relies on space-based and unmanned systems that are intended to work together to provide a better defense against regional missile proliferation. He asserts, however, that these plans are not tied to Turkey’s civilian nuclear efforts and do not appear aimed at providing Turkey with a nuclear-capabledelivery system. For Stein, the objective of the missile program appears to be to deepen the country’s ability to target ballistic missiles before they are fired and to provide Turkish military planners with greater long-range conventional strike capabilities against a variety of targets.

In the sixth chapter, Mark Hibbs describes the international institutional framework in which Turkey’s civilian nuclear program operates. This framework has been established to foster the peaceful development of nuclear energy while preventing nuclear-weapon proliferation and, ultimately, creating conditions for nuclear disarmament. To the extent that motivations for proliferation and incentives for disarmament depend on how states’ leaders perceive their political-security environment and the costs and benefits of alternate courses of action, this chapter provides an apt bridge to the next chapters, which explore Turkey’s perceptions and policies regarding nuclear deterrence and national power and security.

In the seventh chapter, Mustafa Kibaroğlu explores how Turkey would seek to develop its own nuclear weapons if it wanted to. In the first part of the chapter, Kibaroğlu discusses factors that to date have kept Turkey from seeking to produce its own nuclear-weapon capabilities. He reviews Turkey’s domestic interests and characteristics as well as a number of international factors that have constrained Turkey’s possible ambitions, such as its membership in NATO, its adherence to the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and its European Union (EU) vocation. In the second part of the chapter, Kibaroğlu speculates about possible courses of action that Turkish policymakers could adopt in case they decided to acquire nuclear weapons. He discusses a number of critical issues such as who should be responsible for the development of a nuclear-weapon program, what should be the strategy for evading the country’s commitments under the nuclear nonproliferation regime, which capabilities and technologies should be acquired and/or indigenously developed for becoming self-sufficient in the long term, and who should be Turkey’s international partners in this effort. Kibaroğlu concludes that there are no feasible scenarios under which Turkey could expect to effectively use its nuclear power status, if and when it is achieved. However, there are scenarios in which Turkey’s vital interests would be seriously damaged simply because the country would have attempted to acquire a nuclear-weapon capability.

In a follow-up chapter, Jessica Varnum examines the trends and trigger events that could alter Ankara’s nuclear proliferation decisionmaking. Varnum discusses the effects of domestic politics, the security environment, multilateral interests, and commitments, as well as current and projected capabilities on Turkey’s nuclear future. Chapter 8 should thus be read together with the previous chapter insofar as both seek to understand how Turkey could be diverted from its current path of having a clean track record in the area of nonproliferation. Varnum states that many such dynamics could influence the direction of Turkish nuclear policymaking. However, she maintains that only rarely could a single trend or trigger event cause a country otherwise predisposed to nonproliferation to actually launch a nuclear-weapon program. Varnum concludes by asserting that in Turkey’s case, a range of factors, including domestic politics, the security environment, multilateral interests and commitments, and current and projected nuclear capabilities, favors continued proliferation restraint.

Finally, in the conclusion, George Perkovich highlights this volume’s purpose of creating a baseline of current information and analysis on Turkey’s history, interests, capabilities, and dilemmas that we hope analysts, journalists, and policymakers will build upon. To this end, Perkovich emphasizes several clusters of facts and insights from these chapters that may correct assumptions or assertions on the part of some casual observers and commentators regarding Turkey’s efforts to pursue nuclear energy and national security. He concludes with a set of questions whose answers may predict the trajectory of Turkey’s nuclear future.

NOTE

1. Iran argues that it has never sought nuclear weapons. The United States and others contend that before 2003 there was a nuclear-weapon program in the country. The IAEA has not rendered a judgment, but it has identified a number of activities that have possible military dimensions, making it impossible, without further information, for the agency to determine that Iran’s nuclear program has been and remains exclusively peaceful. Syria was secretly developing a reactor that the IAEA and other states believe was meant to produce plutonium, presumably for subsequent use in a nuclear-weapon program.

CHAPTER 1

TURKEY AND

NUCLEAR ENERGY

GÜRKAN KUMBAROĞLU

TURKEY’S LONG-STANDING INTEREST IN NUCLEAR POWER

Turkey’s quest for nuclear energy can be traced back almost as far as its membership in the Atoms for Peace program in 1955. It was in the following year that Turkey’s Atomic Energy Commission was founded under the auspices of the prime ministry. A 1 megawatt (MW) research reactor began operation in 1962. The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources was established a year later, and the Electric Works Study Administration, a division within the ministry, began feasibility studies for the construction of a nuclear power plant: a 300–400 MWe (megawatts of electrical output) pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR) that was planned to go online in 1977. The studies lasted until 1970, but the project was later canceled due to issues related to site selection, among others. Meanwhile, in 1972 a Nuclear Power Plants Division was set up under the auspices of the Turkish Electricity Authority (TEK), which conducted feasibility, bid specification, and site selection studies for a 600 MW power plant that was planned to come online in 1983. With respect to site selection, three places ranked highest on the cost-benefit scale: Akkuyu in Mersin Province, Inceburun in Sinop Province, and İğneada in Kirklareli Province.

Akkuyu was picked as the site of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant and received its site license in 1976. A Swedish consortium consisting of ASEA-ATOM (charged with the boiling water nuclear reactor) and STAL-LAVAL (charged with the turbine) was chosen in 1977 for construction of the 600 MW plant. However, the negotiations were stopped in 1979 after the Swedish government refused to provide financial guarantees and the Turkish government failed to display strong political will on the issue due to political instabilities at the time that resulted in the 1980 military coup.

A renewed effort for nuclear energy took place in the 1980s. Site selection studies for a second nuclear power plant began in 1980, and Inceburun was selected by the Nuclear Power Plants Division. In 1983, Ankara sent letters of intent to three companies for the construction of three or four nuclear power plants in Turkey. One letter went to the West German Siemens-Kraftwerk Union for the construction of a 990 MWe pressurized water reactor (PWR) in Akkuyu, another to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) for a 655 MWe CANDU reactor, and the last one to General Electric (GE) in the United States for the construction of one or two boiling water reactors in Inceburun with a total installed capacity of 1,185 MWe.1 However, after preliminary site studies in Inceburun revealed that the likelihood of earthquakes in the area increased the cost of constructing a facility,2 GE determined that it would not be feasible to build a nuclear power plant there until further comprehensive seismic studies were made and halted the negotiations. Negotiations with the other companies that began in 1984 were not fruitful either. Ankara’s preferred financing model, Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT), was one reason for this. In the BOT model, the contractor company pays for the construction and operating costs of a given facility and operates the facility for a predetermined period of time (fifteen years in this case), thus recouping its expenses plus profit, after which it transfers control of the facility to the host government. At the time, the BOT model had never been used in a nuclear power plant. Initially, Siemens-Kraftwerk Union pulled out of the negotiations due to disagreements on the financing and partnership arrangements. Negotiations with AECL continued, and the Turkish parliament ratified a nuclear cooperation agreement with Canada in 1985. AECL and the Turkish authorities reportedly signed a preliminary agreement, in which it was agreed that TEK would have 40 percent of the shares and that AECL and its partners would have the remaining 60 percent.3 But the talks broke down over issues regarding financial guarantees, as neither the Turkish government nor the Canadian government wished to provide extensive financial guarantees. Moreover, AECL requested that risk coverage should be specified in the contract and that during the time it operates the facility, Turkish electricity purchases should be in dollars and should be sufficient for AECL to recoup its expenses.4 By 1987, the talks with the Canadian side had collapsed.

The 1980s were characterized by capacity building at the institutional level as well as by the ratification of various international agreements. In 1980, Ankara ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which it had signed in 1969. In an agreement signed with the International Atomic Energy Agency a year later, Ankara accepted IAEA safeguards and supervision over all existing and future nuclear facilities. A year after that, in 1982, Turkey’s Atomic Energy Commission was reorganized as the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority (TAEK) and placed once again under the auspices of the prime ministry. In 1983, another organization under the name Nuclear Power Plants Institution was founded and put in charge of managing various aspects of nuclear power generation, such as constructing and managing plants, building necessary infrastructure, conducting feasibility studies, and so on. It would later turn out that the organization existed only on paper and was shut down in 1991. In 1984, Turkey became a member of the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 compelled the Turkish government to suspend its nuclear energy ambitions. In 1988, the Nuclear Power Plants Division was disbanded during the reorganization of TEK and most of the staff left TEK, taking their years of expertise with them.5 In the same year, Turkey and Argentina signed a fifteen-year nuclear cooperation agreement, which was ratified by the Turkish parliament in 1992.6 Ankara was interested in two nuclear reactors of Argentinean design: the 380 MWe Argos PWR and the 25 MWe CAREM-25. The two countries agreed to establish a joint architecture-engineering firm in 1990 and committed to building two CAREM-25 units, one in each country, in a deal in which Turkey would take the lead in financing the plants and Argentina would take the lead in providing the technology.7 It was expected that if the cooperation in CAREM-25 bore fruit, the 380 MWe Argos PWR might follow it. However, the Argentinean project was also canceled, reportedly because the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries had proliferation concerns tied to the CAREM-25 deal. Executives at TAEK concluded that going ahead with the Argentinean project might hamper Turkey’s chances of cooperating with other countries on nuclear issues in the future.8

In 1992 the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources submitted a report to the government in which it stated that unless new energy sources were installed before 2010, the country would face an energy crisis. The report strongly suggested that nuclear energy should be taken into consideration.9 Turkey’s annual energy consumption growth rate since 1975 had been around 8 percent,10 a trend that has continued since then. In the same year, TEK sent letters to prominent nuclear companies asking for technical and financial information on a 1,000 MW nuclear power plant consisting of one or two units that would come online in 2002 and be built with the BOT model. The following year, nuclear plants were included once again in Ankara’s investment program, and electricity generation through nuclear power plants was listed as the third-highest priority of the country by the Science and Technology Upper Council of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK).11 Ankara started taking offers from consulting companies in 1994. A major structural change came into effect the same year, namely the split of TEK into the Turkish Electricity Distribution Co. and Turkish Electricity Generation Transmission Co. (TEAŞ), which retained authority over nuclear matters and later reestablished a Nuclear Power Plants Division.

Revised tender specifications for the plant in Akkuyu were released at the end of 1996, and bids from three companies were taken the following year: for two 669.5 MW or four 665.5 MW CANDU type PHWRs from AECL; for one or two 1,482 MW PWRs from Nuclear Power International, which consisted of Siemens and Framatome, a French firm; and for a 1,218 MW PWR from the consortium of Westinghouse from the United States and Mitsubishi from Japan.12 The government, however, delayed its decision no less than eight times13 between 1998 and 2000 and finally abandoned the plans in July 2000 due to economic circumstances. Furthermore, the Nuclear Power Plants Division was shut down once more.

Turkey signed several nuclear cooperation agreements in the second half of the 1990s:14 with Germany in 1998 (not ratified), with South Korea in 1998 (ratified in 1999), with France in 1999 (ratified in 2011), and with the United States in 2000 (ratified in 2006). In 2008, after nearly six decades of wavering, it appeared that Ankara had become more resolute with regard to its nuclear energy program. The site in Akkuyu was once again opened to the bidding process, for which only one bid was submitted in 2008 by a consortium of 14 parties including two Russian companies, Atomstroyexport and Inter RAO, and a Turkish firm, Park Teknik, for four VVER-1200 (each 1,200 MWe) reactors. Even though high-level talks were conducted the following year (including some with the