Thrace and Anatolia are two geographically unequal parts into which Turkey is divided. While the first is part of Europe, the second is completely located in the Asian part and occupies the almost perfectly rectangular peninsula of Asia Minor.
Turkey landforms and minerals
Despite the growing share of renewable energy in electricity production, fossil fuels still account for more than 86% of its production. And this means that the most advantageous countries are those that either extract such resources on their territory, or are located in close proximity to the exporting countries. Turkey, unfortunately, does not have significant hydrocarbon reserves on its territory.
Being a country with a developing economy, Turkey needs a lot of fossil fuels and is dependent on its foreign suppliers, since among the large deposits of energy fossils in Turkey there are only coal.
In an effort to reduce dependence on foreign natural gas, the Turkish government adopted the Energy Vision 2023 program, which involves the use of local coal deposits and the active development of green energy based on renewable sources. In the future, the Turkish authorities hope to reduce the share of foreign energy to 38%.
Historical mines
Despite the small amount of fossil fuels and other mineral resources in Turkey, they are more than enough for the country. It must be said that in the territory of present-day Turkey one of the first mines on earth was equipped in which people began to extract copper and iron.
Today, Turkey is ranked twenty-eighth in the world in terms of mineral production, and tenth in terms of the variety of minerals. Most of the minerals mined in the country are used and processed here.
The oldest metal mining sites are in Central Anatolia and in the east of the country, in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains, where copper is mined from ll millennium BC. e. Other minerals of Turkey are represented by iron, lead, mercury, tin, silver. Especially the country is rich in boron, 75% of the world's reserves of which are located in the republic.
Minerals of Turkey. Briefly
To begin with, it is worth identifying the main areas of occurrence of natural resources of industrial value. Rich deposits of brown coal are located mainly in the west of the country and in the western part of the Black Sea coast, in the area of the city of Zonguldak, from which the seams are stretched deep into the peninsula to a depth of two hundred kilometers, and this area is considered the most well-developed from a technical point of view.
It is believed that the features of the relief of Turkey and the minerals located in its western part may be of interest to potential investors, however, the difficult geopolitical situation and the border with Syria hinder the active development of the provinces.
It is worth noting here that if earlier the raw materials were exported, now the main consumers are located inside the country, as industrial production inside Turkey increased markedly in the nineties.
Oil fields
A few oil fields are located in southeastern Turkey, but they barely cover 15% of all the needs of a dynamically developing industrialized country.
The Garzan field was discovered in the southeast of Anatolia, in the province of Batman, near the city of the same name in 1951. Soon after the discovery of the field, its development began, which means that by 2017 the oil-bearing horizons are close to depletion and daily production does not exceed 1,700 barrels per day.
The Raman field, which is slightly larger in volume, is located in the same province, and despite the fact that it was explored ten years earlier, oil production there exceeds 4,000 barrels a day, and reliably confirmed cumulative reserves exceed 400 million barrels.
Minerals in Turkey are distributed extremely unevenly, almost all oil fields are concentrated in the southeastern provinces of the country, which are more prone to political instability in the countries neighboring Turkey.
Metal production
Mining in Turkey has a long tradition. For example, iron ore deposits were known on the territory of the modern republic at a time when not only there was no country with that name, but metallurgical technology was not even discovered.
After Europe began to actively use the technology of smelting high-quality iron using coal, the development of deposits in Turkey ceased as unnecessary.
However, in recent times , iron mining has again returned. First of all, for military needs.
Fortunately for government officials, iron deposits in Turkey are wider than oil deposits and have far greater reserves of raw materials, which together with large coal deposits offer significant advantages in steel production.
Lead and zinc
The relief and minerals of Turkey are inextricably linked with each other, because a significant part of the country's territory is covered by mountains, which are the most obvious places of occurrence of valuable metal ores.
In Anatolia, zinc ore deposits are widespread, which, in addition to zinc itself, contain significant impurities of lead and other elements, and the most common ore of this type is sphalerite. There are more than two hundred deposits of this mineral in the country, and the largest mines are located in the western part of the country.
The Republic of Turkey managed to occupy a significant part of the international market for ferrous metallurgy due to the fact that many developed western countries began to withdraw dirty industries abroad.
However, in addition to their own iron ore reserves, Turkish metallurgical enterprises actively use ferrous metal scrap brought from abroad. Thus, the country managed to occupy one of the leading places among importers of scrap metal.
Mercury stock
While Turkey can cover its needs, at least partially, with the majority of mineral and hydrocarbon deposits, but obviously cannot take a leading position in the international market, the situation with mercury is fundamentally different.
According to geologists, up to 25% of the world's reserves of this metal, for which there is a traditionally high and stable demand in the international market, are at the disposal of the Turkish mining industry.
Considering what are the features of the relief of Turkey, the mineral resources of the country require a special approach to the development of their deposits, since some of them are not in the most accessible places - in the mountainous regions of the country.