By Mehmet Enes Beşer

ANKARA, Türkiye: Malaysia began raising the palm-oil content of transport diesel from B10 to B15 on 1 June 2026, a change expected to use about 0.8 million tonnes of crude palm oil a year. Türkiye, meanwhile, entered 2026 with full enforcement of contaminant limits on imported edible oils, including tests for 3-MCPD esters and glycidyl esters. These decisions are usually debated separately. They should not be. The same crop is being treated as food, fuel, chemical feedstock and a source of mill waste whose methane can either escape or be captured.

Türkiye and Malaysia should stop negotiating palm oil as one product with one political meaning. They need a common traceability requirement at plantation and processing level, followed by different rules for food, energy and industrial applications. This is a stricter approach, because regulation would follow the origin and intended use of each shipment instead of relying on one tax, certificate or ban.

The relationship is large enough for bad policy to matter. Malaysia exported 0.75 million tonnes of palm oil to Türkiye in 2025, making Türkiye its fifth-largest market. Yet discussion in Türkiye still reduces palm oil to a choice between cheap food and environmental or health concern. That frame overlooks firms using palm derivatives in soap, cosmetics, rubber, plastics and lubricants. A measure aimed at supermarket food can distort a chemical supply chain if customs treatment does not distinguish the intended use.

Food regulation shows why precision matters. Türkiye’s contaminant rules apply to edible oils regardless of origin and set differentiated limits by category. This targets contaminants formed during processing and refining. A palm-specific ban would be cruder. It could encourage manufacturers to substitute another fat without improving the final product, while doing nothing about poor refining practices in other oils. Nutrition policy should address formulation and labelling; border controls should test contaminants; traceability should establish origin. One tax cannot perform all those jobs well.

Malaysia’s biodiesel policy creates another collision. B15 is intended both to reduce dependence on imported fossil diesel and to create predictable domestic demand for palm oil. That may support energy security and smallholder incomes. It does not make every litre climate-friendly. The result depends on land-use history, processing energy, transport and methane from palm-oil mill effluent. By December 2024, only 170 of Malaysia’s 446 operating mills had biogas-capture facilities. Capturing that methane for power or biomethane can offer a clearer emissions gain than shipping food-grade oil abroad simply to burn it.

This should shape Türkiye’s energy offer. Turkish companies can provide digesters, gas-cleaning systems and combined heat-and-power equipment for Malaysian mills. They should enter where there is a reliable user for the gas or electricity and a credible operating plan. Palm residues are not free fuel: some have competing uses in soil improvement, compost or materials. Assuming every tonne is available can make an attractive feasibility study fail in operation.

Traceability can provide the common floor. Malaysia’s MSPO scheme requires its online module to be used by mills, refiners, oleochemical plants, biodiesel plants, dealers and exporters; suppliers, buyers and contract sales must be recorded. The scheme explicitly describes its label as “single-issue”, concerning sustainable oil-palm management. Türkiye should respect that limit. MSPO data can verify origin and chain of custody, but the logo cannot certify the nutritional quality of food, the lifecycle emissions of biodiesel or the performance of a lubricant. Those claims require separate evidence. 

The industrial opportunity is already real. Malaysia accounts for about 20 per cent of global oleochemical capacity. Turkish group Evyap began operating an oleochemical plant in Johor in 2014, expanded capacity to 400,000 tonnes and later added specialty-chemical plants. Its Malaysian operation supplies more than 500 customers in 70 countries. This is more useful than importing bulk oil alone: production near the feedstock, Turkish investment and engineering, and access to global industrial markets.

The next step is not to declare all palm-based chemicals “green”. Türkiye and Malaysia should develop jointly tested specialty surfactants, bio-lubricants, solvents and biomaterials, then compare them with the petroleum-based products they replace. Chemical safety, technical performance and lifecycle emissions should determine whether public support is justified. Food-contaminant limits have no place in that assessment, just as an industrial specification cannot answer a nutrition question.

The first Türkiye–Malaysia High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council met in January 2026 and produced an agreement between MIDA and Türkiye’s Investment and Finance Office. Those institutions should create an end-use protocol rather than another general palm-oil working group. Import documents would identify whether a traceable batch is destined for food, fuel or chemical processing. Food consignments would face contaminant and labelling rules; fuels would require lifecycle-carbon accounting; industrial derivatives would be assessed under chemical and performance standards. Waste projects would report methane captured and useful energy delivered.

A good first project would connect one traceable Malaysian supply chain to a jointly formulated industrial product while capturing biogas at the supplying mill. Turkish and Malaysian public finance could support testing, equipment and certification, but not guarantee sales. Published results should show feedstock origin, emissions reduced at the mill, value added in each country and repeat orders. If the pilot merely moves more tonnes, it has reproduced the old commodity relationship.

At the next council meeting, the two governments should stop asking whether Türkiye is “for” or “against” palm oil. The decision that matters is which use deserves which rule. A blanket ban or tax would leave the conflicts between food safety, energy security and climate policy unresolved. Separating those uses while tracing the same upstream chain would give Türkiye stricter regulation and give Malaysia a partnership built around higher-value production rather than defence of a controversial raw material.

*Mehmet Enes Beşer is a researcher focusing on ASEAN, and a graduate of Sociology in Boğaziçi University. His work examines Türkiye’s relations with Southeast Asian countries, particularly in the fields of economic development, industrial cooperation, and foreign policy. He's also the ASEAN Coordinator at Vatan Party (Türkiye) and a member of the Editorial Board of Teori magazine.*