From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War/Jeopolitik Rekabetten Stratejik Ortakliga: Soguk Savas Sonrasi Turkiye - Rusya Iliskileri.

• Author: Balta, Evren
• Position: Report

Introduction

Economic and political relations between Turkey and Russia have deepened since the early 1990s. The number of Russian tourists visiting Turkey has increased significantly, reaching four million by 2014. By 2015, Russia's share of Turkey's natural gas imports was around 55%. (1) During the 2000s, bilateral trade between Turkey and Russia also increased significantly, from $4.5 billion in 2000 to $33.5 billion in 2012. (2) The establishment of the High-Level Cooperation Council in 2010 institutionalized the two countries' expanding economic and cultural ties.

The cooperation that shaped Turkey-Russia relations during the 2000s suffered a notable setback on 24 November 2015, when Turkey downed a Russian warplane on the Syrian border--becoming the first NATO member state to do so since the Korean War. For eight months, from November 2015 to July 2016, the two countries experienced extremely strained political and economic relations--one of their worst crises in bilateral relations since the 1950s. However, just one year later, a rapid and unexpected normalization occured, gaining momentum after the failed 15 July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey. Russia and Turkey once again declared themselves to be essential partners in both foreign political and economic relations.

How can we understand this tumultuous history and the sudden shifts in Turkish-Russian relations? What explains these fluctuations between conflict and cooperation? This article reviews evolving political and economic relations, including military and energy cooperation between the two countries. It then discusses the socio-cultural aspects of bilateral relations, showing how conflicting geopolitical interests have overshadowed the economic cooperation and cultural exchange that had marked the previous two decades. The expansive analytical literature that has emerged on Turkish-Russian relations in recent years has sought to analyze these trends in conflict and cooperation. In what follows, I will proceed to an analysis of different conceptual approaches to Turkish-Russian relations. By reviewing some of the most prominent works on the topic, this article emphasizes the necessity of a multi-causal and analytically eclectic approach to account for diverging relations between the two states.

Conceptual Approaches to Turkish-Russian Relations

The current literature on foreign policy analysis in general, and on Turkish-Russian relations in particular, are divided--not always neatly--among the competing research traditions in the field, each of which draws on quite distinct theoretical postulates to present an account of the vagaries of international politics. Neorealist theories, for example, emphasize the primacy of power and interests in international relations, mostly focusing on changes in power asymmetries and diverging material interests to account for trends in foreign policy. Similarly, neorealist accounts of Turkish-Russian relations focus on the distribution of power to explain bilateral relations. Reasoning from that perspective, Akturk, for example, argues that the dynamics of conflict and cooperation between Turkey and Russia can essentially be understood from the power asymmetries between them. As power asymmetry widens, conflict tends to become more likely, whereas periods of cooperation usually emerge as power structures become more symmetrical. (3)

Neorealist theories also put special emphasis on alliance structures and the distribution of power to explain both state behavior and the dynamics of conflict and cooperation. They assume that relations between states, including those of regional powers, derive directly from the distribution of power at the global level. When this distribution is bipolar, as in the Cold War, alliance structures are more stable. In contrast, in an unbalanced, multipolar world, alliances become more fluid and flexible. Given that states in such a world constantly shift their alliances, this creates more unpredictability and makes conflict more likely. (4) Scholars adopting this perspective towards Turkish-Russian relations have therefore used the global distribution of power as a factor in explaining trends of conflict and cooperation. In a widely cited work, Sezer argues that Turkish-Russian relations can be explained as a derivative of the distribution of power within the international system, while the dynamics of conflict and cooperation between the two countries are a direct consequence of economic and security competition between the transatlantic and Eurasian blocs. (5)

Other scholars, on the other hand, focus not only on the competition between the two blocs but also on their ability to include and represent the particular national interests of Turkey and Russia. Coupled with domestic-level explanations, these perspectives try to explain the increasing cooperation between the two countries as an 'alliance of the excluded' or 'unrepresented'. (6) Accordingly, they tend to cooperate more when they find themselves more isolated in the international environment. This isolation can relate to both domestic tendencies, such as increasing international criticism of their human rights records or authoritarian tendencies, and geopolitical competition. Reasoned from this perspective, the likelihood of relations between Russia and Turkey advancing towards strategic alliance increases when both countries have conflicted orientations toward the transatlantic bloc. (7) Sakwa, for example, highlights Europe's inability to form a greater continental unification strategy, a failure that intensifies the conflict between the European periphery and the transatlantic bloc. The failure to create a framework for normative and geopolitical inclusion means that countries like Turkey and Russia feel more excluded and isolated, which draws them closer together. (8)

This 'axis of the excluded', however, is not only based on geopolitical competition, but on historical traumas as well as an overlapping desire to recover the status within the modern world system enjoyed by the former Russian and Ottoman Empires. (9) According to Zarakol, the most significant resemblance between these two countries is their intricate historical relationship with the West, since they have inherited the problem of 'capturing the West' from the Russian and Ottoman Empires, respectively. Both had to join the modern international system by giving up their previously privileged positions, but their new positions have not been fully compatible with their inner perceptions, which were shaped over centuries of being 'masters' of their own land. (10) Therefore, they have experienced significant competition with the West rather than with each other, while their national interests have become defined in direct relation to the West. (11)

Patterns in conflict and cooperation between the two countries cannot be explained only by political and/or ideational factors. In fact, increasing economic cooperation and foreign trade patterns is a major factor in explaining the dynamics of the bilateral relations. Studies show that states with high levels of trade and institutional mechanisms that sustain trade are less prone to disputes than other states. (12) Such empirical links between trade and conflict are, however, limited and quite contradictory since research also shows that trade can continue even during wartime between enemies, and that states can easily compartmentalize their economic relations. (13) Similarly, Onis and Yilmaz argue that one important strategy for Turkey and Russia has been their tendency to compartmentalize economic issues and geopolitical rivalries to avoid negative spillover from either. This trend is especially reflected in energy cooperation, which continued to flourish even during the intense crisis after Turkey's downing of the Russian jet in 2015. (14) Increasing trade is clearly an important impetus for both states to resolve their differences and to create more compatible regional policies. Furthermore, increasing economic cooperation has prompted flourishing social and economic networks. (15) In fact, Turkey's increasing economic cooperation and socio-cultural exchanges with Russia have created trade lobbies that directly benefit from the political rapprochement between Turkey and Russia. Increasing migration, (16) tourism, and informal trade, (17) are also transforming the social networks between the two societies. However, an analysis of these networks is missing in the literature on Turkish-Russian relations, except some journalistic works that focus on economic networks, especially in the construction and energy sectors. (18)

Along with analyses that focus on trade networks, perspectives that favor regional analysis are also missing or underrepresented in the literature on Turkish-Russian relations. Although the concept of 'region' is frequently utilized in the literature, studies mostly focus on the geostrategic level and thereby fail to explain emerging regional complexes or underutilize the analytical literature on regional blocs. (19) Finally, as in many other countries, domestic politics provide another important context within which the foreign policies of Turkey and Russia are formulated. (20) Yet the changing context of domestic politics in both countries and their effects on bilateral relations are almost absent from the academic literature on Turkish-Russian relations, although most of the journalistic accounts refer to domestic factors and leadership characteristics to explain patterns of conflict and cooperation. (21)

In what follows, this article provides a conceptual discussion of the history of bilateral relations, showing that none of the research traditions would solely provide a conceptual apparatus for framing and investigating problems related to bilateral Turkish-Russian relations. Rather, a complex causality--which includes asymmetrical power relations, diverging definitions of national...