Friend and Foe: Russia–Turkey relations before and after the war in Ukraine

ABSTRACT

The interaction between Russia and Turkey since 2015 suggests a new quality in foreign affairs combining tactical alliance and strategic competition. The Russian invasion of Ukraine did not change this. By studying the cases of Syria, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh, we observe not only elements of geopolitical competition and cooperation but also that the combination of the two contradictory approaches in foreign affairs created new opportunities beneficial to the two sides. Russian-Turkish interactions are a unique case study in international relations and are conditioned by their geopolitical competition with the west, a fact that the war in Ukraine did not alter.

KEYWORDS:

• Geopolitics
• alliances
• Russia
• Turkey
• Syria
• Libya
• Nagorno-karabakh
• Ukraine

Russia and Turkey emerged as simultaneously geopolitical competitors yet also as partners in the on-going conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Caucasus. By comparatively studying those three cases, we might notice the emergence of a pattern; while Russia and Turkey are strategic competitors – Turkey is still a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the avowed military adversary of Russia – they have nevertheless sustained collaboration for a relatively important period and in several different contexts. Despite finding Russia and Turkey at opposite sides of those conflicts, engaged in what could be described as proxy wars and even at times their armies being in positions of exchanging fire, the two powers succeeded in developing continuous collaboration and conflict management. In this role-play between the duo Russia and Turkey, there is more than tactical collaboration between two geopolitical competitors. They succeeded to create new opportunities, new political spaces, and processes whereby they address their priorities, maximize their interests and influence, at the cost of other actors, local as well as international. They not only marginalized Western influence in those regions but also narrowed down the political space of their local allies, increasingly resembling surrogates rather than partners. Moreover, this collaboration between Russia and Turkey has survived the shock of the invasion of Ukraine and the additional polarization it brought to international relations.

There is a novelty in the Russo–Turkish relations that needs further reflection, the analysis of which could also explain Russian–Turkish relations especially in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine and international polarization. This interaction mixes both antagonism and cooperation, accommodating tensions over a period and across various contexts to transform this new phenomenon into a long-term trend. We can find similar mechanisms of interaction at work in different conflict settings, from the management of conflicts in the Middle East to North Africa and even the Caucasus, but also in sensitive sectors such as energy and military industry, suggesting consistency rather than circumstantial phenomenon. This relationship was established after Russia and Turkey clashed militarily in Syria, with the downing of the Russian Sukhoi bomber in November 2015, which threatened further confrontation between the two sides. Instead, Russia–Turkey created mechanisms of collaboration while being on opposite sides of the Syrian war.

The central question of this paper is why and how Russia and Turkey created conditions of collaboration while belonging to two antagonistic military poles and remain today geopolitical competitors.¹ To answer this question, I will study the changes in Russian and Turkish policies since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the Russian direct military intervention in Syria in 2015, considering them turning points not only in the making of Russian–Turkish cooperation but also in international relations. Russian annexation of Crimea and the provoking of a separatist war in the Donbass can be seen now as a first step towards a broader invasion of Ukraine, yet at the same time it was conceptualized as a ‘hybrid’, limited, and multi-layered security operation to keep Ukraine within the Russian sphere of interest, if not influence.² The ‘hybrid’ or ‘asymmetric’ Russian military operations were seen as the appropriate strategic answer for Russia’s weaknesses in the post-Cold War era.³ The Russian intervention in Syria first led to military frictions between the two powers, after which they were able to create mechanisms to manage their relations. Those mechanisms seem to replicate in other conflict zones, such as in Libya and in Nagorno-Karabakh. To understand the Russian–Turkish cooperation despite their strategic interests, we need to look at the broader picture of international relations in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War: both powers feel that their status is disregarded by the global hegemon, the United States, to a degree that US policies threaten their state interests, and even the survival of their regimes. Paradoxically, it was the disengagement of the US from conflict areas in the Middle East and beyond and the impression both in Ankara and in Moscow about the decline of Western power that created opportunities for Russia and Turkey to try and expand their influence in those areas. I will conclude by looking at how the mechanisms established between Russia and Turkey in the previous case studies are being put on trial in the context of the new war in Ukraine.

This overlap between rivalry-and-cooperation and the tension between strategic and tactical interests pose larger questions in post-Cold War IR: what does it mean to be an ‘ally’ in today’s international relations? Do military alliances inherited form the period of the Berlin Wall still hold as a concept to help us understand complex reality, or is it just inertia due to the existence of bureaucratic structures inherited from a time evolved? Is it possible to have long-term collaboration simply based on realpolitik, devoid of shared common values? And finally, did the Russian invasion of Ukraine overcome the complexity and ambiguity of alliances that we can observe in the Russia-Turkey case, to make military blocks once again a major actor in international political affairs? The Russian invasion of Ukraine has revived a polarized reading of international relations and the importance of military alliances, especially of NATO. However the reconsideration of Russia–Turkey case study could offer us some caution from over-emphasizing ideology, value-systems, and the role of large military alliances.

I will be looking at the Russia–Turkey interaction in two fields. The first is in a series of conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Caucasus, and see how this rivalry-collaboration plays out, and whether it is possible to discern a pattern. The second is in the two strategic fields of interaction, namely, energy and military industry. In all those fields – Syria, Libya, Karabakh conflicts, energy collaboration and military production, Russia and Turkey reveal both rivalry and collaboration. Moreover, this type of interaction is visible over a relatively long period of time. The result is continuous tension in the relationship, while at the same time displaying possibilities of mutual benefits because of collaboration, turning those conflicts or strategic sectors mutually beneficial. In Syria, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia–Turkey managed to combine competition and cooperation to create new beneficial opportunities from a given situation. By looking at those cases, the question that remains to be answered is whether such collaboration at the tactical level is possible while remaining competitors on the strategic level especially in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russia and Turkey: complex relationship

How can we qualify the Russia–Turkey relations and their abrupt shifts? The media have already dubbed the relationship as ‘frenemies’,⁴ think tanks described the relationship as ‘co-opetition’,⁵ or as ‘conflictual cooperation’⁶ whereby two powers are simultaneously competitors if not outright enemies, but also partners. In a radio interview given as Ankara threw a new challenge in the Caucasus, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described Russian relationship with Turkey by saying: ‘Turkey never qualified as our strategic ally. It is a partner, a very close partner. In many sectors, this partnership is of strategic nature’.⁷ Then how can we deconstruct this not-so-strategic-partnership? What does it say about broader evolution of international practices? What is particular in this relationship between the two rivals is not separate antagonism in one field, such as geopolitical rivalry, and cooperation in other fields, such as economic, financial, or commercial relations, but it brings cooperation and conflict simultaneously in the same field: Russia and Turkey are both rivals and partners in managing the conflict in Syria, and by managing together the conflict both sides draw profit from it while being on opposite sides. Russia and Turkey are not only enemies in the Syrian conflict, where they arm, man, and take part in military operations across lines of contact, but also succeed in finding a formula where they can manage the conflict, isolate other actors, and reinforce their mutual positions militarily and politically.

Russian and Ottoman empires have been historic rivals, followed by antagonism between Soviet Russia and Republican Turkey during the Cold War. Turkey along with fellow NATO member Norway directly bordered the Soviet Union, and thus prized and supported militarily and financially by Western states. The end of the Cold War questioned Turkey’s strategic relevance to Europe and the US, and in the early 1990s Turkey was seeking alternative roles to remain relevant to the West, suggesting to become a bridgehead to eastwards expansion of Western influence through the Caucasus and Central Asia, ‘from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China’.⁸ This Turkish tilt eastwards threatened to clash with Russian ambitions to preserve its influence over what the first Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev defined as Russia’s ‘Near Abroad’. Yet by the second half of the 1990s, it became evident that there would be no clash between Moscow and Ankara. Turkish economic interests in the post-Soviet space were primarily in Russia rather than Turkic speaking republics of the Caucasus or Central Asia.⁹ Yet, Turkish geopolitical thinking evolved around seemingly contradictory lines, that can be summarized as ‘neo-Ottomanism’ and ‘Eurasianism’, the first reflecting the views of the conservative-Islamists of the AKP seeking influence in former provinces of the Ottoman Empire, while the second was the new ideology of the nationalists and were seeking influence in the Turkic speaking republics of the former Soviet Union. Both of those visions were not strategic orientations but followed a more general cultural and geostrategic pattern of thinking aimed at maximising Turkish influence.¹⁰ This Turkish ideological shift coincided with a similar ‘Eurasianism’ developing in Russia under Putin, an expression of failure to be admitted in the European club and an attempt to seek a prominent position for Russia away from a West seen as arrogant and uncooperative along with the revival of a longing for imperial greatness.¹¹

Initially, growing economic partnership did not evolve into political collaboration. In the next decade, not only Russia and Turkey stopped seeing each other as threats but also their threat perception shifted elsewhere. For Turkey a breaking point was the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which introduced a structural discrepancy between Ankara and Washington. Turkey feared that the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s regime would lead to the emergence of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, thus strengthening the political aspirations of Turkey’s Kurds for autonomy and even independence. Turkey, just like Russia, profoundly fears state collapse and revision of its own borders, defined in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty. The Turkish Parliament denied US access to Iraq through its territories, leading US Genera Staff to modify its plans with only limited force projection in the north of Iraq. This led to grave consequences later, as Saddam’s elite troops retreated north to towns like Mosul, Tikrit or Tel-A’far, from where they launched their Islamist insurgency. After 2003, for the US military and political planners, Turkey was no more the former ally, but a rival power in the Middle East.

It was in this context that Ankara made political overtures to Russia.¹² By then Russian ruling elite were wary of the US push to extend NATO further eastwards.¹³ Russia felt vulnerable as it was engaged in the bloody Second Chechnya War. Russian sense of vulnerability increased in the wake of the ‘Colour Revolutions’ that overthrew corrupt post-Soviet elites, replacing them with pro-Western reformers. Moscow and Ankara overcame their former divisions, Turkey ending its support to Chechen separatism while Russia reduced its collaboration with the Kurdish guerrillas of PKK. At the time, Turkey and Russia had many parallels: both were ideologically conservative former empires, blending religious messianism (Orthodoxy and Sunni Islam) with secular modernism (Stalinism and Kemalism). Most of all, both were troubled by US expansionism into areas close to their state borders, and US pushed to change the geopolitical status quo, whether by military invasion such as in Iraq or by supporting regime change in such sensitive regions such as Georgia and especially Ukraine.¹⁴

Russia and Turkey, transactional cooperation in Syria

It was in Syria that Russia-Turkey geopolitical competition and tactical cooperation emerged. Paradoxically, Russia and Turkey were not only providing military support to two warring coalitions, but they were even at times engaged in military confrontation with each other. The Russian military intervention in Syria in September 2015 aimed at stopping a Syrian Islamist offensive, supported massively by Turkey, from reaching the coastal mountain regions, and specifically the Alawi heartland, the sectarian support base of the Asad regime. The massive Russian air campaign succeeded not only in stopping rebel offensive, but also tilting the balance of forces in favour of the ruler of Damascus. This geopolitical rivalry took the form of direct military confrontation between Russian military and Turkish forces with the downing of a Russian Sukhoi-24 bomber by Turkish air force on 24 November 2015. By shooting down the Russian warplane, Turkey was attempting to salvage its Syria policy with the declared aim of bringing down the Asad regime, and to protect its Islamist proxies inside Syria. For the first time since the collapse of the USSR, Russia–Turkey relations were at their lowest, and a real confrontation threatened further deterioration.

What followed could be divided into two periods: confrontation followed by – surprisingly – collaboration. Initially, Putin reacted by imposing crippling sanctions on the Turkish economy, stopping all charter flights and tourism, boycotting Turkish agricultural products, and cancelling visa-free travel to Turkish citizens. The sanctions did hurt Turkish economy; trade between the two dropped from $31bn in 2015 to just 8.5bn in the first half of 2016, essentially composed of natural gas exports.¹⁵ From a total of 48.43 billion cubic meters (bcm) of imported natural gas, 26.78 bcm came from Russia, creating inter-dependence between the two states, and neither of the sides was ready to risk it.¹⁶

Tension eased after June 2016 when Erdogan apologized to the Russian leader for downing the jet, ‘asked to be forgiven’¹⁷ and expressed his readiness to restore relations with Russia. Six months after the downing of the Russian bomber the two sides not only managed to overcome the crisis, but also succeeded in establishing working collaboration in Syrian warzones. In July 2017, Russia and Turkey moved the political talks on the Syria conflict from Geneva to Astana. This was not just a simple shift of location of the negotiations but diverting the process away from UN’s multilateralism and commandeering the keys to the political process of Syrian conflict regulation away from the West, limiting it within the trio Russia, Turkey, and Iran. Even the Syrian regime representative was marginalized in those talks.¹⁸ Russia–Turkey cooperation around Astana led to trade-offs on the ground in Syria: Turkey withdrew support from rebel groups controlling the eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo and its countryside (December 2016), in return Russia withdrew its air support from Kurdish majority area of Afrin and allowed Turkish invasion of the province (January–March 2018). In 2019, a second Turkish military incursion in north-east Syria led to the occupation of another strip including the Kurdish inhabited towns of Ras ul-‘Ayn and Tall Abyad.

This cooperation of managing the war in Syria did not always go smoothly. In early 2020, forces loyal to al-Asad were advancing in Idlib province and west Aleppo countryside, Turkish troops deployed in observation posts came under intense attack killing a total of 58 soldiers.¹⁹ This triggered massive Turkish retaliation against Syrian Arab Army positions. The crisis was sorted out only after Erdogan visited Moscow where he met Putin for six hours, and a new ceasefire agreement was concluded. The agreement preserved the territorial gains of pro-regime fighters, and the withdrawal of pro-Turkish rebels and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly al-Qaeda in Syria) fighters from M4 and M5 highways linking Aleppo with coastal Latakia, but also preserved Turkish control over Idlib.²⁰

The Russian–Turkish cooperation within Astana Talks created an unequal partnership: Ankara had to abandon its earlier aims of overthrowing the al-Asad regime and replacing it by a pro-Turkish Sunni-Islamist one, by a lesser ambition that of preventing the emergence of a Kurdish autonomous entity in northern Syria. For Moscow, such demands from Ankara could be easily accommodated without paying a price, as the Kurdish forces had been key US ally in the region in their fight against ISIS. Russia, on the other hand, remained the dominant force in Syria, playing the role of the equilibrist between the al-Asad regime on the one hand, and on the other various foreign forces including that of Iran, Turkey, the US, and the regular attacks of Israeli air force against pro-Iranian operatives. The Russia–Turkey collaboration, despite geopolitical tensions, was conditioned by the duos’ opposition to American presence in the Syria conflict area.

Proxy wars in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh

The model created in Syria – geopolitical competition, military tensions, yet tactical collaboration – was replicated in two other conflict zones, first in Libya and later in the Caucasus. While those two cases are very different from each other, we can see similar mechanism at play. Libya is a war-torn country that disintegrated into civil war in the aftermath of the 2011 popular uprising against the long-time dictator Colonel Muammar Qadhafi. Since, the country is dominated by a multitude of rival military formations with shifting allegiances. For Turkey and Russia, Libya was devoid of any vital strategic significance compare to Syria’s significance to Turkish national security, or the Caucasus to Russia. It offered the two states an opportunity for power projection, marking geopolitical gains, and becoming major players on the international scene.

Turkey started its intervention in Libya as early as in 2014, supporting the Misrata Islamist militias against their rivals in eastern Libya, during the battle of Benghazi.²¹ Yet, Turkish intervention took a new turn following the offensive launched by Haftar’s Libyan Arab National Army (LNA) on western Libya, when LNA forces reached suburbs of Tripoli but failed to capture the Libyan capital. By late 2019, Turkey openly intervened in the Libyan conflict in support of GNA, by deploying Bayraktar TB2 ground attack drones, sending warships on the Libyan coast, and transferring several thousand Syrian opposition fighters to Libya.²² This massive Turkish intervention shifted the balance of forces. Turkish air attacks decimated the undefended and long logistic lines of LNA that stretched from eastern Libya all the way to the frontlines in Tripoli. There are also instances of direct Turkish military participation in the military operations when a frigate fired an SM-1MR missile against an LNA drone near Sabratha.²³ Turkish military intervention soon produced dramatic changes on the ground: on April 13, GNA forces rapidly occupied several towns on the western coast, including Sorman, Sabratha, and Zuwara, reaching the Tunisian border. The rapid advance continued, as LNA forces withdrew from southern Tripoli, and then abandoned the towns of Tarhouna, and Bani Walid. The debacle of LNA troops from western Libya mirrored their equally rapid advance in the desert war a year earlier.

While this proxy war at times was painful, leading to the destruction of precious military material by the ‘rival-partner’, there were also some clear red-lines respected: advancing GNA troops gave time to Wagner mercenaries to be airlifted from Bani Walid to LNA safe areas further east. Also, when GNA troops reached at the outskirts of Sirte, Russian (also Egyptian) ultimatum made them stop. The pro-Turkish advance was counter balanced when on 14 May 2020, a total of 14 MiG-29 interceptors and Su-24 bombers were flown from Russian bases in Astrakhan to Jufra airbase in central Libya, under LNA control.²⁴

Just like in Syria, Russia, and Turkey emerged as the lead actors on the Libyan scene largely to fill a power vacuum. UN initiative was a sham; EU and NATO were deeply divided in Libya. While EU members France and Greece supported LNA, Italy and Malta sided with Turkey and the GNA. French President Emmanuel Macron is the only European head of state that personally received Haftar. On the other hand, Italian warplanes were spotted at Misrata airport, and an Italian military drone crashed near Tarhuna in November 2019.²⁵ NATO members France and Turkey came close to military confrontation: on 10 June 2020, a Turkish frigate homed-in its radars three times targeting French navy vessel Le Courbet, which was participating in a mission to impose arms embargo on Libya.²⁶

If we compare the military campaigns in Libya in 2019–2020, and the on-going war in Syria since 2016, we can discern a pattern emerging. While Russia and Turkey found themselves – once again – on opposing geopolitical camps, they nevertheless succeeded in collaborating on the tactical level. By doing so they created favourable conditions for themselves; they increased their military and political influence over Libya by marginalising Western influence as well as by reducing the margin of manoeuvre of local Libyan actors. Haftars’ defeat in the battle of Tripoli was not necessarily the defeat of Russia and the decline of its influence; on the contrary, there are signs that Russia increased its influence in eastern Libya by further weakening Haftar and his team. This came at limited cost – probably the military equipment deployed were paid for if not by the Libyan sides, then by their sponsors in rich Gulf states such as Qatar and the Emirates. While being at opposite sides of the conflict, Russia–Turkey avoided this time direct clash, and instead coordinated the conflict for their own maximum benefit.

The war in the Caucasus in 2020, now known as the Second Karabakh War, had very different significance compared to the conflict in North Africa.²⁷ Turkey tried to expand its influence into Russia’s most sensitive area in its self-declared ‘Near Abroad’, to the South Caucasus. Since the collapse of the USSR, Russia had fought two bloody wars to maintain its control over the northern slopes of the Caucasus, during the two Chechnya Wars (1994–1996 and 1999–2004). Therefore, the Karabakh War of 2020 was a challenge by Turkey to Russia, a symmetric response to Russian presence in a similarly sensitive area for Turkey – that is Syria.²⁸ During the 44 days of the war, Russia did not publicly choose sides, allowed the war to proceed, and intervened only at the end to strengthen its military presence in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone while at the same time excluding other external actors from the deal including the West but also Turkey. While Russia succeeded in turning the Turkish geopolitical challenge into an opportunity and consolidate its hegemony over the South Caucasus, I will argue below that this result came at a certain price. Hybrid policies tend to produce similarly hybrid outcomes.

With Azerbaijan launching a massive attack on 27 September 2020, along the entire lines of defence of Karabakh Armenian forces, the complex relation between Russia and Turkey entered a new and dangerous stage. In the Second Karabakh War of 2020, Turkey was directly involved in the conflict on the side of Azerbaijan, while Russia has a security treaty with Armenia, Armenia is a member of the Russia-sponsored Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Armenian armed forces were almost entirely equipped by Russian weapons. Russia also has important economic partnership with Azerbaijan as well as collaboration in military domains. Unlike Russia, Turkey had strong relations to one of the conflict parties – Azerbaijan – and no relations at all with its neighbour at its eastern borders, Armenia. Three decades after the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of independent Armenia, Ankara continues to refuse normalization of relations and having diplomatic representations with Armenia, while the border between the two countries remains shutdown – the last surviving portion of the iron curtain.²⁹ Turkey has taken part in planning and executing the current war in Karabakh on three levels: by active part in commanding the military operations, deploying its air-force, and by recruiting several thousand of Syrian and other Islamist mercenaries, and sending them to Azerbaijan’s frontlines.³⁰ The Turkish push for a new war in Karabakh threatened Russia with a lose-lose situation: if it intervenes in favour of the Armenian side to re-establish the balance of power, it would antagonize Azerbaijan; if it does not intervene, then its major ally in the Caucasus would be left alone to the joint Turkish-Azerbaijani offensive and lose, while Russian reputation as a reliable partner would suffer. Turkish meddling in what was once called Russia’s ‘Near Abroad’ has never reached such a defying level, and the first time a NATO member militarily deployed over post-Soviet territory, if we exclude the Baltic states.

Turkey followed several objectives in its direct intervention in the Caucasus: first, overthrowing the diplomatic format of Karabakh negotiations, by eliminating the OSCE’s Minsk Group, and excluding France and the US from conflict mediation, replacing by a kind of ‘Astana format’ by joint Russia–Turkey conflict management. The second dimension is Turkish military influence over Azerbaijan itself. According to Russian media reports Turkish military officers led the Second Karabakh War.³¹ This was done by not only taking over the military operations during the war but also by replacing pro-Russian officers with others formed in Turkish military academies. For example, the Chief of Staff of Azerbaijani Army Nejmeddin Sadikov considered to be pro-Russian, was excluded from leading the army before being sacked in an unceremoniously communiqué in January 2021.³² Lastly, Erdogan is using his new presence in Azerbaijan to create new leverages over Iran, by agitating the question of ‘Southern Azerbaijan’.³³ In other words, Turkish support for Azerbaijan during the second Karabakh war not only attempted to push Western actors out of the political process of the Karabakh conflict settlement but also to ameliorate Turkish stand in the geopolitical game with Russia as well as Iran.

The sudden Turkish entry on the Caucasus theatre posed a major challenge to the Kremlin. The move placed the delicate Russian balancing-game – or the ‘pivotal deterrence’ – between Armenia and Azerbaijan under serious pressure.³⁴ Russia profited from the Karabakh conflict by balancing the two parties. Both during the war, and in the post-war period, Russian policymakers have kept their policy of balancing between the two warring former Soviet republics.

Turkish direct intervention in the South Caucasus, and its increasing influence over Azerbaijani armed forces, raises a series of security challenges for Russia, and poses several conceptual questions. In the post-war period, the influence of Turkish military influence over Azerbaijani army became more obvious with the formation of a ‘Special commandment group’ supervised by four Turkish generals.³⁵ Regardless of the current stage of Russian-Turkish relations, Turkey remains a member of NATO, which means that in a former Soviet republic that is Azerbaijan, a country bordering Russia’s sensitive North Caucasus, there is potential NATO presence. In other words, Turkish direct military intervention in Karabakh also poses problems for the internal security of Russia. At the height of the Karabakh war, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergey Naryshkin was quoted saying: ‘We (…) cannot stay unconcerned over the fact that southern Caucasus may become a new foothold for the international terror groups, which would allow the militants to infiltrate other states bordering Azerbaijan and Armenia, including Russia’.³⁶ Those fears can be better understood if one considers that the North Caucasus adjacent to Azerbaijan could be considered Russia’s Achilles’ heel, where it recently fought two wars against Islamist rebels.³⁷

The outcome of the Second Karabakh War can best be described as paradoxical. The 9 November 2020³⁸ cease-fire agreement advanced Russian interests in the South Caucasus, while limiting the spread of Turkish influence in a zone critical for Russia’s security. It kept the Armenian-Azerbaijani political process under Russian influence, excluding the two Western OSCE Minsk Group co-presidents (France and USA), while keeping Turkey out. In fact, the November 9 agreement does not even mention Turkey. Militarily it advanced further Russian interests by deploying some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers in the conflict zone and specifically in areas of Nagorno Karabakh still under Armenian control. By doing so, Russia brought post-revolutionary Armenia under tight Russian control, but also deployed Russian troops inside Azerbaijan proper – for the first time since the last Russian military evacuated Azerbaijan in 2012. Moscow accommodated Turkish demands to play a role in Karabakh cease-fire, by agreeing to establish a joint cease-fire monitoring centre. But even this step led to additional Russian influence over Azerbaijan, as the monitoring centre was placed in Giyameddinli village, east of the conflict zone in Azerbaijan proper.³⁹

On the other hand Russian image as hegemonic power was tarnished, Russia failed to protect its major ally in the Caucasus, its weapon systems destroyed by the Azerbaijani army using Turkish drones and Israeli missile systems. The consequences of this paradoxical outcome can be seen elsewhere, where Russian power was challenged, such as in Donbas. Turkish–Ukrainian military collaboration was intensified: in early 2021, Turkey and Ukraine signed a collaboration agreement on 30 defence projects, including Ukraine purchasing 48 Turkish-made ground attack Bayraktar TB2 drones, joint production of aviation engines including for Turkish Akinci drones, armoured vehicle engines, etc.⁴⁰ On 26 October 2021, the first usage of Turkish attack drone to destroy a pro-Russian D-30 howitzer operated by pro-Russian separatists increased tensions in Donbass in the prelude to the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.⁴¹

Military industry, oil, gas, and a nuclear power plant

The complexity of Russia–Turkey interactions goes beyond the management of conflict zones to the military and energy sectors. While Russia and Turkey were managing the conflicts and occasionally clashing in the Middle East and the Caucasus, the two sides also developed military collaboration. Russian–Turkish cooperation went a step further when in September 2017 Turkey announced it waspurchasing Russian S-400 anti-air missiles. The missile system was activated in test-launch on 16 October 2020. US military fear that by operating the S-400, NATO member Turkey would allow the Russian military access ‘data on the capabilities of the American-made F-35 stealth fighter jet’.⁴² In the aftermath of this deal, US froze the delivery of 100 F-35A jets. Russian leadership expressed readiness to furnish Turkey with advanced jet fighters, including its fifth-generation Su-57 fighter jets.⁴³

As Russia was marketing its high-tech weapon systems to Turkey, the weapon systems produced by them were clashing in the Libyan desert. The battle of Libya in 2020 was also a contest between Turkish Bayraktar drones and Russian Pantsir air defences. On 18 May 2020, the strategic al-Watiya airbase fell to pro-Turkish forces, capturing large quantities of armament including a Russian Pantsir-S1 anti-air missile system, which was later transferred to the US.⁴⁴

The energy sector equally reveals elements of tension and competition, as well as partnership and collaboration. We have already seen that in the aftermath of the 2015 downing of the Russian Sukhoi in Syria, the two sides have remained interdependent in the energy sector: Russia depends on Turkey for its energy exports, while Turkey depends on Russia as a source for natural gas. As a gesture for reconciliation, Turkey made substantial financial concessions, for example giving tax-breaks of $8bn–$9bn on Akkuyu nuclear power plant under construction by the Russian Rusatom.⁴⁵ In October 2016, the two sides signed a new contract of a pipeline crossing the Black Sea to transport Russian natural gas to Turkey and further to Europe, the Turk Stream. This project, completed in January 2020, delivers gas to Bulgaria and North Macedonia, replacing an older pipeline that crossed Ukraine.

Russian invasion of Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 imposed a new polarization in international relations, and specifically on the European continent. Western countries imposed draconian economic sanctions on Russia and sent massive military assistance to Ukraine. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to the collective West isolating Russia politically, economically, and financially. The scale of the polarization between the Western alliance and Russia has reached a level unseen since the early 1990s, and risks breaking the already weakened multilateralism of global governance structured around the United Nations. Under those conditions, it became very difficult to stay in the grey zone, to be part of the Western military alliance but also trade and dialogue with Russia. The pressure on Turkey to choose either east or west increased dramatically. Yet, as we see in the following months, Ankara continued its ‘friend and foe’ relationship with Russia on the one hand, and Ukraine and the Western alliance on the other. This continuity in Russia–Turkey relations reveal that apart from tactical collaboration in Syria and Libya, Russia-Turkey relations have taken a more permanent form.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine turned upside down the relationship between Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While in previous conflicts, Russia always could get the lion’s share of the spoils in the various warzones it interacted with Turkey, the Russian military difficulties in Ukraine have strengthened the position of Turkey.

In the military field, Turkish military exports to Ukraine increased dramatically during the war. In the first four months of the war, Turkey supplied 50 additional attack drones to Ukraine.⁴⁶ Already by April 2022, they had jumped 30-fold compared to the previous year, from $1.9 million to $59.1 million.⁴⁷ In August 2022, Turkey sold 50 Kipri armoured vehicles to Ukraine.⁴⁸ Compared to American and European military assistance provided to Ukraine, Turkish arms sales are relatively insignificant. Yet, in the early months of the war, when Western aid was limited to short-range anti-Tank and anti-air missiles, Turkish drones played an important role, including in the sinking of Russia’s Black Sea flagship vessel Moskva, a guided missile cruiser in 14 April 2022, by providing targeting information.⁴⁹

On the other hand, Turkey refused to join the Western economic and financial sanctions on Russia. ‘In terms of sanctions’, announced Erdogan, ‘we cannot put aside our relations with Russia (…) I cannot leave my people to freeze in winter, and (…) I cannot completely reboot this industry of ours’.⁵⁰ This Turkish position was maintained even after the repeated Russian military defeats in the Kyiv battle in the spring, as well as in the Kharkiv battle in September. In fact, Turkey profited from the conflict and the new international situation to boost its economic and financial interactions with Russia.

Turkey providing substantial economic and especially financial services for the Russian war effort. Turkey ‘doubled’ its import of Russian oil in the first six months following the start of the war, increasing its imports from 90,000 to 200,000 barrels per day.⁵¹ The Russia-Turkey energy collaboration reached a new level in October 2022 following a summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, between Putin and Erdogan in which the Russian leader proposed turning Turkey into a major gas hub to export Russian natural gas to Europe. This comes as Nord Stream 1 and 2 for the transportation of Russian gas to Germany has become no longer ‘reliable’ according to Putin.⁵² Financially, several Turkish banks adopted the Russian Mir payments system, an alternative to Swift which is suspended in Russia, until it was suspended under Western pressure in September 2022.⁵³ Russia has transferred in July 2022 5 billion USD to speed up the construction of the nuclear power plant, boosting Turkish currency reserves.⁵⁴

Diplomatically, Ankara emerged as one of the mediators between the warring sides. Politically, Turkey tried to balance between Ukraine and the West on the one side, and Russia on the other. It closed the Bosporus and Dardanelles to warships four days after the start of the invasion. But Turkey also opposed the NATO expansion and the inclusion of Finland and Sweden, linking those issues with its domestic Kurdish problem, and demanding the Nordic countries to surrender Kurdish activists. Turkey has also played a key role as mediator, next to the UN, in reaching a deal between Ukraine and Russia to resume Ukrainian grain exports via Black Sea ports.⁵⁵

The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought increasing pressure on Turkey to choose between Russia and the West.⁵⁶ If in the early weeks of the conflict, the Turkish ‘wait-and-see’ attitude could be comprehensible, the continuous collaboration between the two powers even after Russian military setbacks reveals structural causes for the Turkish position. More broadly, it is part of Turkish strategic revisionism that started in the post-Cold-War period, moving away from earlier isolationism into seeking influence in former Ottoman lands, as well as in Turkic republics in the east, articulated earlier under ‘Strategic Depth’ doctrine.⁵⁷ This search for influence has been recently rebranded under the claims of ‘Blue Homeland’ (or ‘Mavi Vatan’). An old, irredentist claim that Ankara recently activated, developed by Turkish rear admiral Cem Gürdeniz, cognized as a security zone for Turkey, and popularized by another rear admiral Cihat Yaci.⁵⁸ It lays claim to a maritime zone of influence that Ankara seeks as zone of influence over some 462,000 km² in the Mediterranean and all the way to the southern part of the Black Sea. The outcome of the Russia–Ukrainian war will be detrimental for Turkey and its influence in the Black Sea, as it could fill any vacuum resulting from this conflict.⁵⁹ The activation of Blue Homeland concept, and the frantic Turkish efforts to hydrocarbon exploration at the price of creating serious tensions with the EU – Turkey’s major commercial partner – can be explained by Ankara’s attempt to decrease its costly energy expenses but also to diversify its energy imports away from Russia. Turkish strategic dilemma with Russia was well expressed by a senior advisor to the Turkish President: ‘Russia is neither an ally, nor an enemy, but we can’t negotiate if we are too dependent on them, especially when it comes to energy’.⁶⁰ In 2019, Turkey spent $41 billion on energy imports, down from $43bn in 2018.⁶¹

Conclusion: strategy and tactics

Some scholars have described post-2015 Russia–Turkey relations as ‘geopolitical alignment’ and ‘strategic’ in nature.⁶² Yet, a closer look would reveal that any definition of the term strategic supposes long-term collaboration on some core interests and values. While on the geopolitical level Russia and Turkey are rivals and found themselves consistently on opposite sides of conflicts, on the strategic level we can find both competition but also collaboration and coordination. Lawrence Freedman defines strategic as the ‘ability to look up from the short term and the trivial to view the long term and the essential’.⁶³ What we see in the several years of Russia–Turkish interaction is the short term and the transactional, rather than the long term, and the strategic alignment. This visible paradox could be explained by broadening the picture: in fact, Russia-Turkey relations can only be understood as a triangle, as both states continuously obsere each other while simultaneously watching the West. Already in an article in 2006, Fiona Hill and Omer Taspinar remarked that ‘[t]he Turkish-Russian relationship (…) is founded on a sense of exclusion by the United States, not mutual interests’.⁶⁴ In the last decade, political elites in Ankara and Moscow increasingly regarded the West as a threat to their vital interests. This is the result of discrepancy between the ambitions and self-image that both Russia and Turkey have regarding their place in international politics, and Western policies that prevented them from achieving their ambitions. In this, both powers found a common cause, considering the West as an obstacle to achieve their strategic goals. Although the degree of integration of Turkish elites economically within European economy and financial markets, and Turkish military’s decades-long collaboration with other NATO members and especially the US, a wave of anti-Western sentiments among elites and the public took shape in the last two decades. Turkish ‘pro-government media is full of articles which detail the historical injustices against both Turkey and Russia while supporters of the governing party are celebrating how Turkey and Russia have challenged the hegemony of the West’.⁶⁵ Similar bitterness can be found among Russian strategic thinkers: ‘One of the key tendencies in the early 21^st century is the reaction to the dramatic weakening of the Old West’s military-political (…) and economic’ position, wrote Sergey Karaganov before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.⁶⁶ This shared anti-westernism overlapped with a sense of opportunity that the West was in decline, that US is disengaging from the Middle East but also from other regions such as Central Asia, while the EU is divided and weak, unable to find unity of purpose. The Russian–Turkish partnership of circumstantial and tactical nature is the result of simultaneous anti-western sentiments and opportunity offered by the weakness of the EU and the withdrawal of the US from the eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus.

Politically, Russia and Turkey do not have an overall value-system that cements their cooperation. The two powers have deployed discourses that at times argue in favour of international law and present their actions as defending legitimate governments, at times as challengers of the status quo, and even as part of ‘war against terrorism’. Russia has spinned its intervention in Syria as defender of status quo against western attempts at regime change – although by 2015 it was evident that the West was not going to intervene apart from fighting against ISIS.⁶⁷ Ankara presents its intervention in Syria especially against the Kurds as ‘anti-terrorism’ operation, while simultaneously Ankara defends salafi-jihadi groups in Idlib, including the largest military force there the Hayat Tah’rir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate, and even collaborated with ISIS.⁶⁸ While Ankara defends Sunni Islam in its intervention in Syria, it has supported Shia-majority Azerbaijan in the name of Turkic solidarity. There is no over-arching principle based on which Ankara or Moscow intervenes in conflict zones; what matters is immediate interests of maximizing power and influence.

As the Cold War ended, Samuel Huntington prophesized that new blocks of cultural-religious ‘civilizations’ will replace the former bipolar world based on ideological rivalry. Despite what radical Islamists, and right-wing nationalists might think, this happened only on the margins. Instead of the emergence of new blocks, what we are witnessing is the disintegration of broader blocks and alliances. This fragmentation of international politics has several driving forces, such as the decline of the modern nation-state under the pressure of globalization trends, the weakening of the unipolar moment and the ‘fall of the international liberal order’ and its value system that could have glued together long-term alliance formations.⁶⁹ Consequently, international institutions that date from the polarized period of the Cold War are eroding. Multilateralism is in decline, military alliances inherited from the past, such as NATO or CSTO (the replacement of the Warsaw Pact) are laden by contradictions that makes them of limited operational value. While Turkey remains a member of NATO, it nevertheless maintains important although often tense relations with Russia, in strategic sectors such as energy as well as in military collaboration. Are large military blocks obsolete in the post-Cold War age, or did the Russian invasion of Ukraine awaken a second life to military alliances?

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Oksana Antonenko and Arman Grigoryan for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was possible thanks to Webster University Geneva Research Grant 2021-2022.

Notes on contributors

Vicken Cheterian

Vicken Cheterian is a university lecturer, practitioner, and author specialized in violent conflicts. He has done field work in most of post-Soviet and Middle East and North African countries. His academic research has included civil wars, transition, nationalism, sectarianism, jihadism, and genocide. He has published in leading academic journals including Survival, Europe-Asia Studies, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Central Asian Survey, Journal of North African Studies, Relations Internationales, Nationalities Papers, Journal of Historical Sociology, and among others. He is a lecturer in history and international relations at the University of Geneva, and at Webster University Geneva. He is the author of War and Peace in the Caucasus, Russia’s Troubled Frontier, published by Hurst and Columbia University Press, and his latest book is Open Wounds, Armenians, Turks and a Century of Genocide, published by Hurst and Oxford University Press. As a practitioner, he was involved in peacebuilding projects in the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia. He is especially interested in the potential of development projects in peacebuilding. He has also advised a number of governmental agencies and international organizations, including the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, UNEP, UNDP, the World Bank, ICC, OSCE, European Commission’s ECHO, etc. Moreover, he served as policy and media advisor on two UN Commissions of Inquiry. He has also published in mainstream media including in Le Monde diplomatique, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Al-Hayat, Agos, etc. His current research involves the evolution of sectarianism in the modern Middle East.

Notes

1. Criss and Güner, 365–376; Sezer, 59–82.

2. Galeotti, 282–301; Oskanian, 26–52; Thornton, 52–60.

3. Mumford, 824–27; Caliskan and Liégeois, 295–319.

4. See Mert.

5. See Tashjian.

6. Isachenko, ‘Turkey and Russia, the Logic of Conflictual Cooperation’.

7. ‘Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview’.

8. Hedges, ‘Turkey Off Balance as Death Ends a Long Rivalry’.

9. Aktürk, 337–364.

10. Ersen, 24–44.

11. Arbatova, 7–24.

12. Hill and Taspinar, 84.

13. Tsygankov, 101–111.

14. Thomas Ambrosio, ‘Russia’, 136–155; Cheterian, ‘Perestroika, Transition, Colour Revolutions’, 1–31.

15. Cetingulec, ‘Can Turkey-Russia trade reach $100 billion target?’.

16. Winrow, ‘Turkey and Russia: The Importance of Energy Ties’, 18.

17. Al-Jazeera, June 27, 2016.

18. Hamidi, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, October 11, 2020.

19. Roth, ‘Russia and Turkey agree ceasefire in Syria’s Idlib province’.

20. Higgins, ‘Putin and Erdogan’.

21. Joffé, ‘Libya: the new geopolitical arena’, 681–688. See the interview of Jalel Harchaoui, in Young, ‘Into the Libya Vortex’.

22. Estimates of Syrian Islamists sent by Turkey to Libya vary between 3’800 mercenaries according to the Pentagon, The National, July 18, 2020.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) puts the total number of mercenaries sent by Turkey to Libya at 18’000. See SOHR, September 26, 2020.

23. Aude Thomas, ‘The Turkey-UAE race to the bottom in Libya’, 10.

24. Brian Katz, Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., ‘Moscow’s Next Front: Russia’s Expanding Footprint in Libya’.

25. Kington, ‘Italy confirms military drone crashed in Libya’.

26. Tenré, « Le Courbet ».

27. Amirkhanyan, ‘A Failure to Innovate’; Hayrapetyan, ‘The Nagorno-Karabakh war of 2020’, 83–97.

28. Daria Isachenko, ‘Turkey-Russia Partnership in the War over Nagorno-Karabakh’.

29. Cheterian, ‘The Last Closed Border of the Cold War’ 71–90; see also Cheterian, ‘The Uses and Abuses of History’ 884–903.

30. Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, ‘More Reports of Syrian Mercenaries Sent to Azerbaijan’.

31. According to Russian sources Turkey deployed important military resources in the war effort, including 600 hundred military experts, 6 aircrafts (F-16s), 8 helicopters, and 20 drones, as well as Syrian mercenaries. Chernenko, ‘Prinuzhdeniye k Konflikti’.

32. Azeri-Press Agency, January 28, 2021; Ulkar Natiqqizi, ‘Azerbaijan national hero’.

33. Mamedov, ‘In Azerbaijan, Turkish leader has eyes on Iran’.

34. Laurence Broers, Armenia and Azerbaijan, 205.

35. Gasanova, ‘Chetiri Turetski generali naznacheni v Baki’.

36. Tass, October 6, 2020.

37. Emil A. Souleimanov, ‘Jihad or Security?’ 86–105; Vicken Cheterian, War and Peace in the Caucasus, chapter 5.

38. ‘Zayavlenie Prezidenta Azerbaijanskoi Respubliki, Premyer-ministra Respubliki Armeniya I Prezidenta Rossiskoi Federatsiyi’.

39. Kucera, ‘Russia and Turkey open joint military centre in Azerbaijan’.

40. Ukrinform, January 9, 2021.

41. The Moscow Times, ‘Ukraine Destroys Pro-Russian Artillery in Its First Use of Turkish Drones’.

42. Burns, ‘Trump administration slams NATO ally Turkey for test-firing S-400 air defense system’.

43. Hürriyet Daily News, May 3, 2019.

44. Trevithick, ‘The United States Smuggled A Russian-Made Pantsir Air Defense System Out of Libya’.

45. Dogan, ‘Putin gets big kiss-and-make-up gift from Erdogan’.

46. Soylu, ‘Ukraine received 50 Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones since Russian invasion’.

47. Middle East Monitor, ‘Ukraine’s defence imports from Turkey jump 30-fold in Q1’.

48. Bekdil, ‘Turkey sends 50 mine-resistant vehicles’.

49. Hambling, ‘Ukraine’s Bayraktar Drone Helped Sink Russian Flagship Moskva’.

50. Tass, ‘Turkey will not join sanctions against Russia – Erdogan’.

51. Reuters, ‘Turkey doubles Russian oil imports, filling EU void’.

52. Frazer, “’No waiting’: Turkey, Russia”.

53. Moscow Times, September 29, 2022.

54. Kozok, ‘Russia Is Wiring Dollars to Turkey’.

55. Koshiw, ‘Grain Ship Leaves Ukraine Port’.

56. Bechevis, ‘Turkey, Between a Rock and a Hard Place on Russia’.

57. Alexander Murinson, ‘The Strategic Depth Doctrine of Turkish Foreign Policy’, 945–964.

58. Gingeras, ‘What can a Retired Sailor Teach us about Turkey?’.

59. Kormych and Malyarenko, ‘From grey zone to conventional warfare’.

60. Gaveriaux, ‘Gas war with Russia drives Turkey in the Caucasus’.

61. TRT World, August 21, 2020.

62. Köstem, ‘Russian-Turkish cooperation in Syria: geopolitical alignment with limits’, 8 and 12.

63. Freedman, Strategy, iv.

64. Fiona Hill and Omer Taspinar, op. cit., 90.

65. Mert, op. cit..

66. Karaganov, ‘Global Challenges and Russia’s Foreign Policy’, 462.

67. Even the chemical attack on Damascus suburbs of eastern Ghouta in August 2013 was not followed by an American military action, even though it challenged US President Barak Obama’s ‘red lines’.

68. Bekdil, ‘Turkey’s Double Game with ISIS’, See also Cheterian, ‘Turkey and the “Islamic State”’.

69. Mearsheimer, ‘Bound to Fail’, 7–50.