The Gulf war reaches Türkiye through its energy bill

The war between the United States and Iran has not touched Türkiye's soil, but it has already reached its economy, and the way in is the energy bill. Türkiye imports almost all the oil and gas it burns, which leaves it among the region's most exposed economies to a Gulf shock. It is exposed on two fronts at once: the price of crude is climbing, and one of the two combatants is a supplier it still leans on.

Oil has turned upward as the fighting has widened. Brent crude has traded in the high $80s to low $90s a barrel in recent days, and average US pump prices have climbed to around $4 a gallon, a second straight week of increases, according to Al Jazeera. The US-Iran exchanges are one pressure on the market; the Houthis' declaration of a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia is another. Oil is still moving through the Strait of Hormuz, but it is moving at a higher price, and Türkiye pays that price like every other importer.

The scale of the exposure sits in the import figures. Türkiye's total oil imports rose almost 3 percent in May from a year earlier, to about 4.1 million tons, with crude alone up more than 7 percent, according to the energy regulator EPDK. Gas imports rose a similar amount, to roughly 3.6 billion cubic meters. The country produces little of either at home, so nearly every barrel and every cubic meter arrives from abroad, and a higher world price feeds straight through to the bill.

Where the war bites most directly is gas. Iran was Türkiye's third-largest pipeline supplier in May, sending 951 million cubic meters, behind only Russia and Azerbaijan. A prolonged conflict, or a strike that reaches Iran's export infrastructure, would put that line at risk in a way a price rise does not. Crude is a smaller supply worry: Türkiye's largest oil suppliers are Russia and Kazakhstan, not Gulf producers, so the danger there is the global price rather than an interrupted flow. The real exposure, then, is the world oil price plus the Iranian gas line, not a wholesale cutoff.

That distinction matters for the wider account. Fitch, affirming Türkiye's rating on 17 July, named the country's large energy-import bill a key vulnerability if the war drags on, and forecast the current-account deficit widening to 3 percent of national output this year, partly on a weaker energy balance. The central bank had already spent reserves defending the lira in the opening days of the war. A sustained climb in crude, and any disruption to the gas coming from Iran, would push the account in the same direction.

For a country that has stayed off the battlefield and pressed hard for a ceasefire, the war's cost is being counted less in the headlines than in the import bill. Every dollar Brent climbs, and every day the strait stays contested, lands somewhere in Türkiye's current account.