The Russian president has been known to hardly praise or praise any of his counterparts. But on Oct. 27, Putin didn’t hesitate to heap praise on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Putin said: “Erdogan is a strong and reliable leader, and his behavior is in line with Turkey’s interests.” A few weeks later, when talking about the renewal of the Black Sea agreement on Ukrainian grain exports, Erdogan also returned his most sincere greetings. He also condemned U.S. pressure on Russia and called for facilitation of exports of Russian grain and fertilizer products.
In fact, relations between Turkey and Russia have never been better in decades. And when Western countries began imposing sanctions on Russia after Russia launched “military operations” against Ukraine, Turkey refused to join the ranks of sanctions. Soon, after the European market was closed to them, the Russian business community, large and small, moved to Turkey. In addition, Turkey has successfully organized the Russia-Ukraine negotiations through extraordinary diplomatic efforts. As the war has dragged on, Turkey has apparently become the sole mediator trusted by the Russian leadership. This can be clearly seen in the efforts of the Turkish leadership, which brokered an agreement that allowed Ukrainian grain exports to resume.
On the other hand, it is also difficult to say that the Biden administration has repositioned the relationship between Turkey and the United States on the basis of Ankara’s satisfaction. The Turkish government is still waiting for positive confirmation from Washington of Ankara’s request to buy 40 F-16 fighter jets made more than a year ago. In addition, Turkey has repeatedly asked the United States to lift the umbrella of the “Syrian Democratic Forces” and the “People’s Protection Forces”, which are closely related to the PKK, but has yet to receive a real response.
The Turkish government is still awaiting positive confirmation from Washington of Ankara’s order for 40 F-16s placed more than a year ago. Moreover, Turkey has yet to find a real response to its repeated demands to lift the U.S. umbrella over the Syrian Democratic Forces and YPG, which are closely allied to the PKK. On November 13, 2022, a bloody explosion occurred on Istiklal Street, one of Istanbul’s busiest streets, as Turkish shoppers and tourists flocked. A few hours later, Turkish security services managed to arrest a girl suspected of planting explosives on the street. Turkish authorities say she is a Syrian national who was trained by the Syrian Democratic Forces and the PKK. It is worth noting that the next morning, the Turkish Interior Minister announced that the Turkish government refused to accept the condolence message from the US embassy in Ankara, implicitly implying that the US provides protection and support to what Turkey considers a Kurdish terrorist organization.
On the one hand, Turkey has long-simmering relations with its Western allies, from France to the United States, in contrast to the tangible warmth in its relations with Russia. As a result, some have questioned whether Turkey is ditching its membership in NATO and moving east instead. In September 2022, didn’t Erdogan also say: Turkey’s goal is to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?
How do we read Turkey-Russia relations and where does it lead? Is Ankara building a real alliance with its major Eurasian neighbors, whatever the implications of this alliance for Turkey’s traditional relations with the West and the US, or is this just a relationship between Russia and Turkey dictated by the special tacit understanding between Putin and Erdogan? A fleeting moment in the long history of rivalries and rivalries caused?
cumulative positive development
It is not true that Turkey’s opening to Russia began only after the AKP came to power in 2002. True, Ankara has opened up channels of understanding with Moscow since the 1970s. In the mid-sixties, the Turkish government was surprised by a threatening letter sent to Cyprus by US President Lyndon Johnson, causing Ankara to initiate a strategic review of the republic’s foreign policy, which lasted several years. As a result of the review, it was necessary to restore relations with the Soviet Union and to establish better relations with the Arab and Islamic countries. Relations culminated in the early eighties, when the Palestine Liberation Organization opened an office in Ankara, and Turkey joined the Organization of the Islamic Conference (later renamed the Organization of Islamic Cooperation).
Although the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 provided greater opportunities for the development of relations between the two countries. However, Turkey experienced political turmoil in the 1990s, and Russia’s economic situation also faced deterioration. These circumstances did not help the relationship between the two countries to achieve substantive progress. With Putin’s presidency in Russia and the start of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, a new chapter of serious cooperation is possible.
From the outset, the AKP-led government has adopted a policy aimed externally at strengthening relations with the regional environment in order to provide the necessary conditions for economic revitalization internally. Turkey naturally sees Russia as a major partner, whether because of the opportunities the Russian market offers for Turkish exports or because of Turkey’s growing demand for energy resources. In the first two decades of this century, Erdogan and Putin conducted dozens of mutual visits, established a high-level cooperation committee, discussed and approved cooperation methods between the two countries, and signed dozens of economic, trade and cultural agreements .
In the fall of 2015, Turkey-Russia relations were in serious crisis after a Turkish pilot shot down a Russian military plane based in Syria that violated Turkish airspace. This reverses nearly all the progress made over the past fifteen years. But Erdogan was extremely keen to restore normal relations, and it actually happened the following summer. Russia’s clear stance on the attempted coup in the summer of 2016 helped increase the level of trust between the two governments, especially because Ankara doubted the veracity of the U.S. stance on the coup. The renewed confidence on both sides cleared the way for Turkey to launch three major military operations in northern Syria, Euphrates Shield (August 2016), Olive Branch (January 2018) and Peace Shield, with Russia’s tacit approval. Spring” (October 2019). At the same time, it contributed to the 2017 agreement to build a gas pipeline directly to Russia via Turkey’s Turk Stream. The pipeline was officially inaugurated two years later in the presence of the leaders of the two countries.
At this special stage, Turkey has taken two very important measures to reconcile with Russia. The first was to award Russia a contract to build Turkey’s first power-generating nuclear reactor; as for the second move, it was about the purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense system, although this was strongly opposed by the United States.
However, there are clear signs that Turkey’s relationship with Russia has not reached the level it reached in February when Russia began military operations in Ukraine. In March, a month after the war broke out, the Russians and Ukrainians met, mediated by Turkey, to negotiate an end to the war. After the negotiations, it was mentioned that the two delegations did reach a preliminary agreement, but the final contact required a meeting between the presidents of Russia and Ukraine. But it was later learned that the positions of the two warring parties were still far apart. And importantly, the choice of Istanbul as the venue for negotiations shows that Turkey is almost the only country in the world that can play the role of a reliable mediator in a war.
That role was instrumental in the July Black Sea grain export deal, which took place in very complex negotiations involving Russia, Ukraine and Turkey. The deal is seen as a major diplomatic victory for Turkey at a time when the war in Ukraine has already sparked a global food crisis. And in early November 2022, Russia seems to want to withdraw from the agreement. At this point Ankara is working to get Russia back into the agreement through direct contacts between Erdogan and Putin. On November 17, amidst global anticipation, Erdogan announced that Turkish mediation had once again succeeded in extending the agreement by another four months.
In August 2022, Turkey and Russia signed a roadmap for economic cooperation, aiming to increase the level of trade between the two countries to US$100 billion per year. The following month, in September, they agreed that Turkey would pay 25 percent of its gas imports from Russia in rubles. That means helping Turkey adjust its balance of payments in a tangible way. Since the beginning of 2022, the rising cost of importing energy resources has placed a heavy burden on the country.
In October, Putin directly proposed a project aimed at turning Turkey into an international hub for Russian gas distribution. This idea quickly got a direct response from Erdogan. Erdogan said he had instructed the competent Turkish authorities to start the necessary preparations for the implementation of the project. Of course, it is obvious that Putin would not have done so had it not been for the complete cessation of work on the Nord Stream pipeline, which brings Russian gas to the countries of northern and western Europe, and if it had not been for his estimation that Russia’s economic break with Europe would continue for some time Propose similar items. But it is also true, especially that the choice of Turkey as a distribution center for Russian gas was a strategic decision that shows Russia’s determination to maintain a close relationship with Turkey for decades to come.
Inconvenient History and Reality
However, if the field of vision is limited to one aspect of these relations, it is difficult to correctly interpret where the relations between Turkey and Russia will go. The two countries are neighbors, each with a deep and deep-rooted heritage, and their relationship has a long and complicated history. Regardless of how Russia has changed from the Tsarist era to the Federal Republic, or the Turks from the Ottoman era to the Turkish Republic, the legacy and deposits of past centuries still haunt both countries. The expansionist tendencies of Tsarist Russia in the 18th century brought the Ottoman Empire its first major defeat and forced it to withdraw from its territories in the Crimea and the Caucasus. The war between the two empires continued unabated thereafter until they were on opposite sides in the first years of the war. Meanwhile, Stalin’s demands for his country’s presence in two straits, the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, prompted Turkey to join NATO.
There is no doubt that the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc at the end of the Cold War relieved Turkey of a heavy geopolitical burden. However, the two countries soon found themselves in conflicting positions in the conflicts that erupted in the Balkans in the 1990s and the Armenian-Azerbaijani war. Meaning, the end of the Cold War does not necessarily mean the end of historical and cultural heritage. Instead, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia have become battlegrounds for long-term competition between the two countries.
The conflict in the Balkans has not been as intense as it was during the long breakup of Yugoslavia. But Turkey backs Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, who face pro-Russian Serbs. Despite Russia’s more rational stance in the last round of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Turkey remains Azerbaijan’s main military and strategic ally.
The Balkan conflict has not been as intense as it was during the long breakup of Yugoslavia, but Turkey is siding with Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, who face the Serbs near Russia. Despite Russia’s more rational stance in the last round of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Turkey remains Azerbaijan’s main military and strategic ally. To be sure, Moscow is uncomfortable with the Turkic State group, which makes Turkey a major partner with influence in Turkey’s Central Asian states. Moscow, on the other hand, regards these countries as its own backyard.
Even in Ukraine, Turkey has been known to lean toward taking a stance against Russian policy since a popular revolution toppled pro-Moscow Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014. Ankara, for its part, welcomes the new Western-leaning regime in Kyiv. When Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014, Ankara refused to recognize the legality of the annexation decision. In late 2020, Turkey and Ukraine signed an agreement to supply Ukraine with frigates as part of efforts by the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to rebuild the Ukrainian fleet and Turkish drones. It is well known that Turkish drones played an important role in the first months of the war in Ukraine, especially in response to the Russian military offensive on Kyiv. While it is always difficult to ascertain information pertaining to an ongoing war, Western reports say Turkey has played a major role in sending Western weapons to Ukraine.
There is no doubt that Turkey does not want to get involved in a war and is eager to avoid it. But what is also certain is that Turkey does not want Ukraine to fail, nor does it accept Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory by force. One of the most important motivations behind Turkey’s stance on this war has to do with the strategic balance in the Black Sea. Since the eighteenth century, it has been a battlefield between Russia and Turkey. In the years leading up to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the Turkish fleet outnumbered the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. However, since Crimea was annexed, most of the ships of the Ukrainian fleet chose to be unified under the Russian flag, and the balance tilted in favor of the Russian fleet. At the beginning of the war, what worried Ankara the most was that the Russian army successfully controlled Odessa, the main port of Ukraine, and thus became the maritime hegemony on the northern coast of the Black Sea.
On the economic front, to be sure, the pace of trade flows has increased significantly over the past two decades. Turkey has a large share of the Russian agricultural product market. And after most European countries imposed sanctions on Russia, this share will surely become even larger. In addition to the work of Turkish companies in the Russian construction sector, Turkey also provides a large part of Russia’s clothing and textile needs. Russia, on the other hand, remains the main gas supplier to the Turkish market despite Turkey’s efforts to diversify its energy sources.
Of course, the war raised the level of trade between the two countries. Due to Western sanctions and Russia’s removal from the financial transaction system SWIFT, the Russian business community has been forced to look for intermediary countries to facilitate Russian trade flows, including exports and imports. There is consistent evidence that Russian capital has been pouring into Turkey over the past few months, with cities such as Istanbul seeing a noticeable increase in the pace of new company registrations. Russian businessmen must have found a convenient center for circumventing Western sanctions in the very important Turkish market, which is closely linked to the European market. Clearly, those European countries, especially those with which Russia had important economic partnerships in the pre-war era, such as Germany, have recognized the nature of this shift in Russian business activity. But it turned a blind eye to it because it would ultimately benefit its own product.
However, continued positive developments in these economic spheres do not imply a fundamental change in Russia’s position on the map of Turkey’s economic and commercial relations. The Turkish economy relies heavily on exports, as do Germany and China.
However, these successive positive developments in the economic sphere do not imply a fundamental change in Russia’s position on the map of Turkey’s economic and commercial relations. The wheels of the Turkish economy depend heavily on exports, as do Germany and China. In addition, Turkey is going through a phase of economic crisis, so it has adopted a new economic and financial model based on increasing export rates and encouraging foreign direct investment. Therefore, Ankara will definitely decide to pursue an unlimited economic and financial policy open to Russia. But regardless of this level of openness, Russia has yet to move past eighth place in Turkey’s list of trading partners, behind Germany, the United States, Iraq, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and France, among others.
mere balance of interests policy
Since its founding a hundred years ago, the Republic of Turkey has chosen to join the camp of Western civilization, but has always maintained a policy of independence from the major colonial powers. In the second half of the century, Turkey became a full and very important member of NATO as Ankara felt threatened by the Soviet Union. Ironically, Turkey’s move to join the Western strategic alliance was the decision of the Menderes government, the same man in charge of the Islamic cultural revival movement in the country.
In effect, the AKP government that has led Turkey for two decades is an extension of Menderes’ government. Although the party government has never shown any inclination to withdraw from the Western alliance, however, it is clear that it seeks to pursue a policy that is more independent of its Western allies, especially the United States. One of the reasons for this policy is the receding threat of Russia and the AKP’s desire to strengthen relations with neighboring Arab and Islamic countries, whether in the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus or Central Asia. As for the other reason, it can be traced back to the new Turkey’s early realization that Europe would not grant it membership of the European Common Market (the European Union, later called the EU), no matter how much it tried to meet the conditions of membership.
Relations between Turkey and the West began to sour in the years following the 2011 Arab revolution, when Turkey emerged as a poster child for Arab forces for change. Some Western countries are very concerned about the expansion of Turkey’s influence in neighboring countries in the region and Turkey’s relatively independent regional policy. That led to a dispute between France and Turkey over the future of Libya and an escalating power struggle in the oil-rich Arab country, as well as the failure of the United States to back Turkey’s position in Syria and what Turks see as collusion between the West and counter-revolutionary forces in Egypt and Tunisia.
Europe and the United States are siding with Greece as tensions escalate between Turkey and Greece over the demarcation of the economic border in the Eastern Mediterranean and the issue of Cyprus. As is customary in Ankara, Washington has unfairly removed Turkey from the F-35 program as punishment for its purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system. Although Turkey did not sign a contract with the Russian system until the United States stopped selling it Patriot systems.
However, it is clear that in the second decade of this century, there is a belief prevailing in the AKP government that the West will not consider Turkey as an ally and partner unless it needs it. Apart from the pre-existing independent leanings within the ranks of the AK Party, this belief provides some justification for closer relations with Russia and China, especially in the economic and technological fields. Just as important, in the fall of 2015, Turkey found itself alone in the face of direct Russian intervention in Syria. Also, since Russia’s intervention in Syria coincides with Russia’s intervention in North and West Africa, as well as the annexation of Crimea. Thus, in Ankara’s view, a different Russia is emerging in the region. And there is a need for a rational policy to deal with the new Russia, as long as the West is not prepared to stand in the face of a growing Russian interventionist movement.
However, this certainly does not mean that Turkey is trying to sever its traditional ties with the West and adopt a strategic Eastward policy. Rather, it means that Turkey seeks a more balanced relationship with all parties on the international stage. This is determined by Turkey’s interests in the region’s periphery, not by the wishes of its Western allies.
Ankara, for example, is keen to fulfill obligations imposed by NATO member states, including those related to Ukraine. But as long as it is not an international sanction and has not obtained the force of international law, it refuses to join the sanctions imposed by the United States and European countries on Russia. Meanwhile, Turkey remains keen to acquire the advanced F-16, as its military leaders see it as a replacement for the F-35 after Turkey was removed from the list of beneficiaries of the F-35. Furthermore, the Turkish military remains committed to being one of the NATO forces in terms of equipment, systems, deployment and planning. At the same time, the Turkish military remains committed to being a NATO force, whether in terms of equipment, systems, deployment, or planning.
In the economic field, Turkey maintains its position on the global economic stage. We all know that Western powers play a major role in determining the nature of the direction of the global economy and its values. Even at the height of the economic and financial crisis, the Turkish government refused to impose restrictions on economic processes and the flow of funds and investments. Policymakers in Ankara are aware that no matter how Turkey’s economic relations with Russia and China develop, the West remains its largest trading partner and largest investor in the Turkish market. And Russia and China remain constrained by demand for Western technology. The Turkish business community has strong ties to major Western markets, as well as Western banks, investment funds and lending institutions.
Turkish universities have close ties with Western universities, and thousands of Turkish students go to European and American institutions every year to complete their postgraduate studies. In addition, Turkish artists in all fields of modern art work on the basis of standards set by the worlds of Western music, theater and film.
There is often talk of the chemistry of the special relationship between Putin and Erdogan. The mutual trust between the two heads of state has greatly contributed to a series of understandings that the two countries have reached in the past few months, both in relation to bilateral relations and to mitigate the impact of the war in Ukraine on the global economy and security. But the Turks haven’t forgotten that this chemistry didn’t stop Russia’s bloody bombing in February 2020. The incident claimed the lives of dozens of Turkish soldiers in Idlib.
In other words, this new warming of Turkey-Russia relations must be seen as the result of a phased convergence of interests rather than a manifestation of any personal relationship. And because the international scene is moving towards new positions, this convergence may last longer than expected. But this by no means means a strategic reversal of the Turkish alliance.
This article is from the Al Jazeera Research Centre.