Türkiye remained structurally detached from the SEE electricity price stack in Week 25. Its weekly average dropped by 27.1% to only €16.66/MWh, far below Greece at €85.50/MWh, Serbia at €85.73/MWh, Bulgaria at €87.58/MWh, Hungary at €109.16/MWh and Italy at €127.69/MWh. The size of this gap makes Türkiye an outlier rather than simply a low-priced regional market.
This detachment has several commercial consequences. First, it limits the usefulness of Türkiye as a direct price comparator for SEE trading. Its market dynamics, supply structure, currency and regulatory setting produce a price outcome that is not aligned with the EU-linked Balkan and Central European markets. Second, it creates questions about cross-border value where physical and regulatory conditions allow flows. A market that is so much cheaper than neighbouring systems naturally attracts attention from traders, industrial buyers and policymakers.
Türkiye also remained a major generation system. It was the region’s largest hydro producer, with hydro generation broadly stable at around 2.44 TWh, helping cushion the wider SEE hydro decline. Its thermal generation remained broadly unchanged, although the mix shifted from gas toward coal. This stability contributed to the country’s very low weekly price compared with the rest of the region.
The wider SEE market moved in a different direction. Demand rose, hydro weakened in several countries, wind declined and evening scarcity became more expensive. Türkiye did not follow that pattern in price terms. That divergence reinforces the idea that SEE is not one unified market, but a set of partially connected systems with very different price anchors.
For industrial competitiveness, Türkiye’s low electricity price creates a notable advantage for energy-intensive production, at least in the short term. For EU-facing exporters, however, low electricity cost is not the same as low-carbon credibility. CBAM-related buyers will increasingly ask about the carbon intensity, verification and contractual traceability of electricity supply.
For SEE traders, Türkiye’s discount is a strategic signal, but not a simple arbitrage story. Interconnection limits, market rules and political-regulatory factors matter. The gap is too large to ignore, but too complex to treat as freely tradable surplus.