On November 12, 2026, a signing ceremony was held in Ankara, putting Türkiye's landscape development in the next few years on the same table with the capital, equipment and engineering capacity of Chinese enterprises. The document did not disclose the specific site or provide a financing loop, but the proposed scale of 7 gigawatts and potential investment of up to 15 billion US dollars are enough to bring this cooperation thread into the view of both parties' energy industries. For Türkiye, which has been relying on imported energy for a long time, this is not a problem of several more power stations, but how to find an external fulcrum for the next round of power growth.

The Seven gigawatts project has been completed

This memorandum of understanding covers two types of projects, photovoltaic and wind power, totaling approximately 7000 megawatts. The installed capacity of wind power in Türkiye currently exceeds 15 GW, and 2142 MW of new wind power will be added in 2025, ranking second in Europe. The addition of 7 gigawatts is roughly equivalent to the country's wind power growth for over a year, and is also in line with its future direction of power installation expansion. The memorandum sets the potential investment cap at $15 billion, but the cap is not a commitment, and the site, financing, and construction pace are yet to be confirmed in subsequent documents. For Chinese companies, this means that cooperation extends from exporting individual equipment to project development, investment, and long-term operation.

Billions of funds awaiting resolution

Türkiye's external dependence on energy has been higher than 70% for a long time, and its electricity consumption is expected to increase from 365 TWh in 2025 to 680 TWh in 2040. On November 5, 2026, the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources of Türkiye Beraktal released the 2040 National Energy Plan, proposing that the total installed capacity of power in the country will be increased from 123 GW at the end of 2025 to 281 GW in 2040, photovoltaic will be increased from 26 GW to 112 GW, wind power will be increased from 15 GW to 63 GW, and energy storage will be increased to 140 GW. It is estimated that about 190 billion dollars of investment will be required in the power sector. Where the money comes from is the hardest constraint in this energy equation. What China can provide is not only equipment, but also funding arrangements, engineering organization, and supply chain support. Keywords: the Belt and Road news, wind power, new energy, connectivity

Localization determines success or failure

After signing the contract, the real threshold is the bidding rules of Türkiye's renewable energy resource zone. The fixed electricity price, long-term power purchase agreement, and localization rate requirements are bundled together, and the winning project usually needs to keep equipment manufacturing and part of the supply chain locally. If you want to get orders, you need to build a factory; If you want to build a factory, you need to put the capacity of blades, components, energy storage, etc. on the land of Türkiye. The pressure of grid connection queuing and consumption cannot be ignored. The earthwork plan plans to invest about 30 billion US dollars to build a transmission network, but the approval cycle and grid connection are still hard constraints. At present, Nordex and Enercon account for a large share of Türkiye's wind turbine market. With Türkiye's customs union status with the European Union, the competition has gone beyond price. Whether China Turkey energy cooperation can move from a buying and selling relationship to investment, construction, and operation sharing depends on whether localized production capacity, financing structure, and grid connection rules can be implemented simultaneously in the next two years.Editor/Gao Xue