By Bosphorus News Energy Desk
Türkiye and Azerbaijan are trying to turn the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline model into a green electricity route, using Georgia and Bulgaria to connect Caspian power generation with Southeast Europe as the European Union struggles to expand its grids.
Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar used the comparison at Baku Energy Week, where he said Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Bulgaria and Southeast European countries wanted to increase regional electricity interconnectivity. TANAP turned Azerbaijani gas into a strategic route through Türkiye toward Europe. Ankara now wants a similar logic applied to electricity trade.
The project is still at an early stage. Feasibility work, financing, grid upgrades and market rules will decide whether it becomes an operating corridor. But the idea has already moved beyond diplomatic language.
In April 2025, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Türkiye and Bulgaria signed a memorandum of understanding on green electricity transmission and trade. The four-country format gives the plan its basic geography. Azerbaijan provides the Caspian starting point. Georgia sits between the Caspian and Türkiye. Türkiye gives the project scale, market depth and transit geography. Bulgaria is the European Union door.
That last point is what makes the corridor a Southeast European story, not only a Türkiye-Azerbaijan story.
Bulgaria gives the route access to a region where electricity has become an economic and political pressure point. Southeast Europe has faced weaker interconnections, higher price pressure and fewer storage options than parts of northwestern Europe. When weather, demand or renewable output move against the region, the cost difference can quickly become a competitiveness problem.
Europe knows the grid is now one of its weakest energy links. The European Commission says electricity consumption is expected to rise sharply by 2030, while 40 percent of EU distribution grids are more than 40 years old. It estimates that €584 billion in investment will be needed by the end of the decade.
The investment problem is not abstract. EU governments recently pushed back against a stronger Commission plan to use more unused congestion revenues from power-market trades for cross-border grid investment. The compromise left Brussels with a larger planning role, but it also showed the old difficulty inside Europe's energy transition: everyone wants more interconnection, but national revenue, permits and politics slow the infrastructure.
The Caspian energy map has already been rewritten once. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carried Azerbaijani crude to the Mediterranean through Türkiye. TANAP carried Azerbaijani gas across Türkiye toward Europe. SOCAR's wider role in regional energy infrastructure, including the transfer of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan operatorship from BP to SOCAR in July 2026, has strengthened Baku's profile as an operator of routes, not only a producer of resources.
Electricity would add a different layer. It is not as simple as building another pipe. Power corridors require synchronized systems, upgraded transmission lines, balancing capacity, regulatory alignment and buyers able to trade electricity across borders. A route that works politically may still fail technically or commercially.
That is why Türkiye's domestic grid plans matter. Reuters reported that Ankara plans about $30 billion in electricity transmission and distribution upgrades over the next decade. Türkiye cannot become a larger power hub only by signing regional memorandums. It must also absorb more renewable generation, strengthen internal transmission and handle cross-border flows without turning domestic bottlenecks into regional ones.
There is also a smaller but telling technical layer between Türkiye and Azerbaijan. The two countries have discussed upgrading electricity links through Nakhchivan, including work involving TEİAŞ and AzerEnerji. Existing capacities are modest, but the Nakhchivan connection shows how the corridor will depend on technical work that rarely appears in political statements: lines, substations, operating agreements and capacity calculations.
The Azerbaijan-Georgia-Türkiye-Bulgaria route also sits beside other competing and overlapping plans. Azerbaijan has promoted green electricity exports across the Black Sea through Georgia and Romania, while Türkiye is trying to strengthen its own place as both a market and a transit state. Bulgaria can act as the European entry point for one route while remaining part of wider EU electricity planning.
The obstacles are large. Caspian renewable capacity must expand. Georgia's transit role must be secured. Türkiye's grid must be upgraded. Bulgaria and neighboring markets must be able to receive and move the electricity. EU rules will matter. So will financing.
But timing gives the plan weight.
The recent Strait of Hormuz crisis reminded Europe that energy security is still shaped by chokepoints, shipping routes and supplier geography. A Caspian electricity corridor cannot replace Gulf energy, liquefied natural gas or oil flows. It belongs to a different category. It would give Southeast Europe another direction from which electricity can move, and it would give Türkiye and Azerbaijan a way to carry their corridor politics into the era of green power.
For Ankara, the corridor would add another case to a familiar argument: Türkiye is inside Europe's energy-security map, but outside several of Europe's decision-making and procurement systems.
The European Union's Security Action for Europe defense instrument has become part of that complaint. Türkiye remains outside the program's equal-access framework even as Turkish officials argue that Europe benefits from the country's geography, defense industry, energy routes and military capacity. Energy corridors and defense mechanisms are not the same issue, but Ankara increasingly reads them through the same access question.
The electricity corridor will not settle that dispute. It will not automatically turn Türkiye into Europe's grid partner. It does show how Ankara and Baku are trying to move from the old corridor map of oil and gas into the next map of electricity, transmission and green power.
Europe's grid bottleneck gives that effort its opening. Southeast Europe gives it a market. Bulgaria gives it an EU door. The test is whether the "electricity version of TANAP" can move from a useful phrase to a built system.
Sources: Reuters, European Commission, Türkiye Energy Ministry, Azerbaijan Energy Ministry, Eurelectric, Interfax, Report.az, Bosphorus News review and reporting.