Absent and Present, Visible and Invisible

Intangible, ubiquitous and elusive at the same time, oil in Turkey is a substance infused with much confusion, speculation and imagination. Due to Turkey's particular geological history and setting, oil is concentrated in very small oil traps. Today, Turkey's limited domestic oil production covers only 7 per cent of its demand. All of this domestic oil, however, is extracted in Turkey's Kurdish-populated south-east, a region characterised in the past century by armed conflict, emergency rule and military occupation. Many do not understand why Turkey has so little oil when its close Middle Eastern neighbours have so much. Some have no idea that oil is being extracted in the south-eastern parts of the country. And yet others think that there is so much more oil than is being revealed, and that sinister powers are obstructing oil's extraction. In the midst of so much speculation, petroleum geologists – and anthropologists of oil – in Turkey are met with puzzled reactions and curious questions that often lead to further speculation and uncertainty.

Faruk, an exploration geologist employed at the state-owned oil company Turkish Petroleum, for instance, often complained about the questions he always got. ‘When I tell people what my job is, I often get this reaction: “What, oil? Is there oil in Turkey? I had no idea!”’ That many people who were not part of the energy industry were not aware of the existence of any domestic production in Turkey was for Faruk an unavoidable consequence of a variety of geological factors that have determined the specific characteristics of oil in Turkey. Yet for a considerable number of people, there are political, not geological forces behind Turkey's low domestic production. For them, the question is not one of geological setting and, thus, of the real absence of large oil reserves. The issue, for them, is that Turkey has, in fact, abundant oil deposits under the ground, but that this fact is hidden by the government, foreign powers or secret international treaties.

Oil has been a key material in the reproduction and mediation of social and political life in the twentieth century.