Key facts
- Bayraktar said the reason for buying less Russian gas and more US gas is price, not politics.
- The price Ankara pays for Russian gas is not publicly available, so the claim cannot be verified.
- CREA analyst Isaac Levi said the remarks could be a bargaining message to Moscow.
- Levi said EU rules fully banning Russian pipeline gas and LNG imports take effect in 2027.
- The IEA said imported energy accounted for 11% of Turkish GDP in 2022.
- The IEA said Russia supplied over 50% of Turkish oil imports in 2024, up from less than one-sixth in 2021.
Turkey's energy minister, Alparslan Bayraktar, said on November 5, 2026 that Turkey is buying less gas from Russia and more from the US for cost reasons rather than geopolitical ones, according to media reports. "Russia is extremely expensive," Bayraktar was reported to have told journalists when presenting Turkey's National Energy 2040 plan, according to the pro-government Turkiye Today.
The price Ankara pays for Russian gas is not publicly available, so Bayraktar's claim cannot be verified. Isaac Levi, an energy policy analyst with the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, told the Kyiv Independent that the remarks could be a bargaining message to Moscow: offer a better price or lose more market share. Levi said buying American LNG may also score points with Washington, while Turkey's insistence that it still needs Russian gas keeps the door open to both suppliers.
An International Energy Agency report on Turkish energy in 2026 said imported energy accounted for 11% of Turkish GDP in 2022. Levi said EU rules completely banning imports of Russian pipeline gas and LNG take effect in 2027, which would cost Russia its biggest LNG customer and could push Moscow to offer deeper discounts to buyers such as Turkey.
Turkey has not joined Western measures against Russian energy imports and has positioned itself as a mediator between Moscow and the West, including in talks to de-escalate attacks in the Black Sea. The IEA report said natural gas accounted for over one quarter of Turkey's total energy supply in 2024, largely imported from Russia. Russia supplied less than one-sixth of Turkish oil imports in 2021 but over 50% in 2024, and has been Turkey's largest coal supplier since 2022, the IEA said.
Ankara and Moscow have also teamed up to build the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, which the IEA said creates a long-term dependency on Rosatom and has an expected service life of 60-80 years.