S400s, sanctions and defiance: explaining Turkey’s quest for strategic autonomy and the US response

ABSTRACT

The United States Congress enacted CAATSA in 2017 to impose various restrictions on traditional rivals of the United States, which, however, was also imposed on a long-term strategic ally, Turkey. How can the application of sanctions designated for strategic rivals and enemies on an ally be explained? This article incorporates the hierarchy theory with Kai He’s negative balancing strategy notion, which provides a solid theoretical explanation for patron states’ punitive measures against their allies. We argue that CAATSA is part of the United States’ current negative balancing strategy, which aims to undermine the power of rising challengers, Russia and China, by preventing (Western) secondary states, including Turkey, from getting (nuclear) weapons from these two countries. In this context, the US used CAATSA sanctions to punish Turkey’s non-compliant and autonomous foreign policy behaviour when Russia and China rivalled the US-led order.

KEYWORDS:

• US
• Turkey
• Russia
• CAATSA
• hierarchy theory
• negative balancing strategy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

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

Notes

1. For an analysis of Turkey-US relations in the 1950s using the hierarchy theory, see Taş Yetim (2021).

2. For an empirical analysis of Turkish foreign policy in the 1950s and Turkey-US relations, see the paper examining Turkey’s voting performance in the UN Security Council during the early Cold War years and confirming Turkey’s strong solidarity with the Western alliance, especially its great power ally, the US, by the statistical findings: (Balcı and Hazar 2021).

3. On the issue of US sanctions imposed on Turkey in the Cold War era, see Taş Yetim (2021); Taş Yetim and Balcı (2021).

4. This new type of sanctions adopted by the administration of US President Bill Clinton is called smart sanctions, which are targeted institutions and individuals rather than states.

5. See Kutlay and Öniş (2021a, 2021b). See also some case studies that address current crises in US-Turkey relations using the hierarchy Balcı (2019a, 2019b).

6. The existence of stratification among actors and authority relationships is called hierarchy. See McDonald (2017).

7. For more on the resistance strategies, see Pape (2005) and Paul (2005).

8. The baulking (non-participation) policy is to reject the hegemon’s demands. See (Williams 2012, 45; Scholvin 2017, 106–111).

9. Leash slipping is a strategy adopted by subject states unworried about being attacked by the hegemonic state. States that adopt this strategy aim at balancing their economic, military, and security dependence on the hegemonic state. See Barnathann (2012, 112–127) and Scholvin (2017, 7).

10. These penalties were issued due to Ankara’s refusal to hand up American Priest Brunson to the US. With this sanction, the assets and interest income of Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu and Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul in the United States were frozen, and US persons were barred from having business or transactions with the ministers.

11. The sanctions list includes National Defence Minister Hulusi Akar, Minister of Energy Fatih Dönmez, Domestic Minister Suleyman Soylu, and the Ministries of Energy and Natural Resources and National Defence. In addition, it was declared that the three ministers’ assets in the United States would be blocked, that they would be unable to do financial transactions with the United States, and that they would be unable to travel to the United States. See BBC News Türkçe (2019a).

12. For more information on Russia-Turkey relations, see Öniş and Yalikun (2021).

13. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet-led order in 1991 left the US as the international system’s only superpower, without any great power peer competitors. While there is still no military counterbalance to US hegemony, this does not mean that second-tier powers have forgone all balancing actions. Instead, they have tried to constrain US power and undermine its hegemony through non-military strategies. See Paul (2005), 46–47; Pape (2005); Voeten (2004); He 2012, 189; Kupchan (2014); Hurrell (2006); (Cooley and Nexon 2020a; İleri 2020b).

14. He argues that China has followed a negative balancing strategy against the US in his study. On the contrary, we argue that both Russia and China have followed negative balancing policies against the US.

15. Turkey’s advances in the domestic defence industry and air defence systems have significantly enabled its somewhat independent Syrian policy (H1a). For example, Turkey has carried out a range of active military operations against the PYD and YPG (People’s Protection Groups), which it considers terrorist organizations due to their undeniable links with the PKK (Balcı 2019a).

16. See Colgan and Miller (2019); Yarhi-milo et al. (2016); Lake (2009a).

17. After the Cold War, Russia’s military establishment remained powerful in supplying nuclear weapons to other states. Russia also acquired sophisticated strategic technologies and developed many chemical and biological weapons. Kupchan (2014), 224; Goh (2013), 1–4; 2019, 614–644.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hüsna Taş Yetim

Hüsna Taş Yetim, graduated from the Ph.D program at Sakarya University’s International Relations Department in January 2021. Dr. Taş Yetim is a guest lecturer at Eskişehir Osmangazi University’s Department of International Relations. Her research interests focus on international hierarchy theory, Turkish foreign policy, and international politics.

Ayşe Hazar

Ayşe Hazar is a research assistant at the Middle East Institute in Sakarya University, Turkey. She studies the foreign policies of Arab states, decolonization, and postcolonial theory. Currently, she is writing her Ph.D. thesis on Arab solidarity in international politics.