Turkey's natural resources

Although Turkey does not have major reserves of strategically vital resources, like petroleum or materials used in advanced technology, its holdings of "heavy" economic export items for other countries' construction or middle-range technology needs are substantial. Turkey's complex relations with the European Union (EU), the United States, and Russia play a major role in determining the development of and markets for its key resources.

The Country

Turkey occupies the major west Asian landmass known by modern geographers as Anatolia (described in more traditional literature as Asia Minor). It also shares a portion of the Balkan Peninsula, with borders with Greece and Bulgaria in southeastern Europe. It has extensive maritime coasts on the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, and the Mediterranean Sea. The eastern third of the country is mountainous. Turkey's population remains unevenly distributed, with higher concentrations in the western portion and sparse population density in the mountainous regions to the east. Its economy remains significantly dependent on agriculture, although its highly educated middle and upper classes have contributed substantially to effective exploitation of several of its key resources and the industrial and service sectors grew considerably in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Borate

Estimates indicate that Turkey holds about two-thirds of the world's borate reserves, followed by the United States (with major reserves in the California desert), Russia, and South America.

Diverse and changing forms of demand, as well as changing technological applications throughout the world, tend to give borate minerals, the source of the element boron, different levels of importance. Commonplace uses include boric acid and cleaning abrasives. It is also used in commercial detergents for well-known bleaching effects and to balance acidity and alkalinity. In middle-level manufacturing, borate is used in industrial production of glass, paints, and paper and in diverse components in electronic and automobile production.

Degrees of processing determine the market price of borates and can, therefore, make Turkey a competitor for a wide range of export markets. If used as a low-cost aggregate in cement, it may be merely crushed to the desired consistency. There is little competition for such products, and export prices are mainly a reflection of relative transportation costs. The traditional place of borate exports in Turkey's overall economy began to face challenges late in 2008, when the European Union passed legislation aimed at decreasing the use of borate in household products in favor of ecologically safer materials.

Coal

Although Turkey has not been counted among the primary exporters of coal and is not likely to move into a situation of competition with giant producers like China and India, the overall position of coal in Turkey's domestic economy is likely to become more and more important. Statistical figures from the first decades of the twenty-first century show that the country's growing industrial sector eclipsed the traditionally dominant agricultural sector in the overall economy and in terms of labor force. Expanding Turkish industries will require ever greater sources of energy, and the relative cost of domestically produced coal is weighed against other forms of energy, most notably petroleum and natural gas.

Although Turkey produces some oil—2023 production estimates were 83,000 barrels per day, drawing from an estimated reserve of 366 million barrels—and has exported some of its production, petroleum consumption needs clearly outstrip domestic supply possibilities. In 2023 estimates pegged Turkey's liquid fuel consumption needs at more than 1 million barrels per day. Turkey is a major hub for the transportation of oil and gas.

Most of the coal mined in Turkey is low-quality lignite (soft) coal. Lignite reserves were estimated at 11.5 billion metric tons, one of the largest in the world. The Elbistan (central Anatolian) basin accounts for 40 percent of lignite total. Although some hard (anthracite) coal is mined in the Zonguldak basin on the Black Sea, where there are estimated reserves of 252 million metric tons, Turkey is obliged to import millions of metric tons of hard coal annually from places as far away as the United States and Australia. Sources in Russia are closer. Policymaking and regulations associated with coal mining have traditionally been assigned to the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources. Once statism began to be abandoned in the 1950s, an entity called the Turkish Coal Enterprises (largely private companies) began to provide state developmental attention to hard-coal mining. Reforms in the late 1980s concentrated authority over the industry in government hands.

Chromium

Turkey's chromium ore reserves are distributed rather widely over several regions: one between the Sea of Marmara and Ankara, one from Sivas in central Anatolia eastward to Diyarbakır, and two zones in the central southeast from Kayseri to Antakya. A few big companies have dominated production of Turkey's chromium ore, including Eti Krom.

By 2023, the major consumer of chromium in the world had become China, which uses the majority of the chromium available on the export market to produce various chromium and stainless-steel commodities of both high and lower-to-medium quality. Although the bulk of Chinese imports of chromium generally come from South Africa, India, and Kazakhstan, Turkish chromium exports to China grew beginning in 2003. In 2002, Turkey did not export any chromium to China; however, the following year, it sent more than 22,600 metric tons. By 2022, this figure had grown to 252 million metric tons.

Marble

Turkey has been a producer of marble for centuries. The most concentrated zones for quarries are located near ancient and well-known cities, including Afyon, Balıkesir, Tokat, and Çanakkale. The most productive quarries (of varying quality) are found in the western regions near the Sea of Marmara and in commercial port cities such as İzmir. The distant eastern location of high-quality quarries has an effect on cost per unit, given higher transportation costs. Estimates indicate that Turkey possessed upward of 4 billion cubic meters of marble in 2022, which was 40 percent the known reserves in the world.

One of the main attractive features of Turkish marble, beyond its range of medium- to high-quality ratings, is its diversity of color and patterns, which demand high prices for export to many areas of the world. Examples of attractive categories include: Elazig Cherry (from central eastern Anatolia); Milas Kavaklidere (from the Ankara region), which is white with purple veins; and Aksehir Black marble. The value of Turkey's processed marble and travertine exports (the most profitable among various natural stone products that are quarried) was than $657 million in 2022. The majority of these exports went to China, India, and Greece.

Granite

A second stone resource for Turkey, high-quality granite, is almost as important as marble. Turkey's annual production of granite varies, but is in the hundreds of thousands of metric tons. Less costly than marble, granite is used widely for exterior surfaces of major buildings and monuments. In the twenty-first century the growing demand for granite for use in modern household interiors, both as flooring and for kitchen or bathroom counters, has encouraged Turkish producers not to expand already massive quarry activities but to select grains that will attract discriminating importers.

Feldspar

Although Italy has traditionally been a main producer of feldspar minerals, with approximately one-fifth of the world's known deposits, Turkey has about 10 percent of world reserves and produced 355 million metric tons in 2022, most of which was exported. Turkish feldspar deposits have been mined for centuries, primarily to supply a long-standing domestic ceramic industry. However, production for export is a fairly recent development, dating from the early 1990s. In less than twenty years, Turkey became the largest exporter of feldspar, holding 45 percent of the global export market and sending most to Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, and even Italy.

Most mining occurs in what is called the "feldspar triangle," running from İzmir and Güllük in the west to Çine to the east. Almost all feldspar mining is in the hands of large domestic private companies, and several Turkish companies have ranked among the top five feldspar mining companies in the world.

Mercury

Turkey was traditionally among the top producers of mercury in the world. By the early years of the twenty-first century, however, China had become the major producer of mercury, and Kyrgyzstan counted as the second main producer. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the price of mercury fell markedly, reaching a low point in the first few years after 2000, further reducing demand for production. Mexico and other nations also surpassed Turkey in mercury production by the mid-2010s.

Previously used as a component in simple household items, such as thermometers and barometers, mercury's importance in middle- to high-range technology continues to be visible in industries active in developed countries (for cooling systems for nuclear reactors and in various phases of the space industry). A predictable level of demand from these sectors represents a certain future for mercury-exporting countries, but—given multiple environmental dangers associated with mercury as well as its high toxicity—the larger picture is less positive. Environmentalists are especially concerned about dangerous effects (specifically methyl mercury poisoning) that stem from the use of mercury in a variety of industrial processes. In 2023, Turkey joined the Minamata Convention on Mercury, which was prepared under the leadership of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to prevent mercury pollution. Countries that join the convention agree to implement measures to protect the environment from mercury.

In Other Resources

An increasingly important by-product of Turkey's domestic agricultural and pastoral sectors is its production of cotton and woolen textiles for export. Hand-woven wool carpets and kilims, in particular, make up an important part of Turkey's production for foreign trade. Bath and table wear (towels and tablecloths) as well as casual clothing are produced from high-quality cotton grown in the southeast, in the provincial zone of Cilicia.

Finally, Turkey sits astride one of the most important maritime straits in the world: the Bosporus. A source of major revenues because of the passage of ships into and out of the Black Sea from the Mediterranean via the international port of Istanbul, this natural waterway counts as one of Turkey's significant resources as well as an economic lifeline for many countries' maritime fleets.

Bibliography

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