Russia has provided Turkey with $9 billion in new financing for the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said. Ankara expects the plant to begin generating electricity in 2026. His remarks were reported by Reuters, citing the Turkish Energy Ministry’s press office.
The Akkuyu plant is being built in Mersin province on the Mediterranean coast by Russia’s state corporation Rosatom under an intergovernmental agreement signed in 2010. The project’s total cost is estimated at $20 billion. It was initially slated to come online in 2025, but the timeline has been pushed back.
Bayraktar said most of the new financing will likely be used in 2026–2027. In 2026, foreign financing will amount to at least $4–5 billion.
Russia’s nuclear sector remains a tool of Moscow’s foreign policy influence. Rosatom builds plants abroad on credit terms and signs long-term fuel, service and personnel training contracts, binding customer countries to Russian technology and supplies for decades. Turkey’s Akkuyu plant is the most prominent example of this model: it is being built under a build–own–operate arrangement, in which the Russian side retains a key role at every stage of the project and bears a significant share of the financial burden.
