From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership:
Turkey and Russia after The Cold War

BALTA, Evren

From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War

Evren BALTA (Özyeğin Üniversitesi, Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü, İstanbul, Türkiye)

Uluslararası İlişkiler

6 0

Yıl: 2019 Cilt: 16 Sayı: 63 Sayfa Aralığı: 69 - 86 Metin Dili: Türkçe İndeks Tarihi: 30-06-2022

From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War

Öz:

This article examines different analytical perspectives on Turkish-Russian relations and provides a conceptual history of developing connections between Turkey and Russia since the end of the Cold War. It first reviews evolving political relations, including military cooperation, and then focuses on economic relations, including energy cooperation. Finally, it discusses the socio-cultural aspects of bilateral relations, focusing on the movement of people. It shows how conflicting geopolitical interests have overshadowed the increasing economic cooperation and cultural exchange that had marked the previous two decades of bilateral relations. Although Turkey and Russia have competing regional interests, their dissatisfaction with and resentment of Western policies is one of the major reasons for their reluctant geopolitical cooperation. This article emphasizes the need for a multi-causal and analytically eclectic approach to analyzing Turkish-Russian relations that selectively recombines analytic components of causal mechanisms in competing research traditions.

Anahtar Kelime:

Belge Türü: Makale Makale Türü: Araştırma Makalesi Erişim Türü: Bibliyografik

1 Data drawn from Turkish Statistical Institute, http://www.turkstat.gov.tr (Accessed 20 June 2017).
2 Ziya Öniş and Şuhnaz Yılmaz, “Turkey and Russia in a Shifting Global Order: Cooperation, Conflict and Asymmetric Interdependence in a Turbulent Region”, Third World Quarterly, Vol 37, No 1, 2016, pp. 71-95.
3 Şener Aktürk, “Türkiye ve Rusya İlişkilerinin Yükselişi ve Gerilemesi: 1992-2015”, Gencer Özcan, Evren Balta, and Burç Beşgül (eds.), Kuşku ile Komşuluk, İstanbul, İletişim, 2017, pp. 129-147.
4 There is a rich literature on the effects of the distribution of power on alliance structures. See, for example, Stephen M. Walt, “Why Alliances Endure or Collapse”, Survival, Vol. 39, No 1, 1997, pp. 156-179. The literature on Turkish-Russian relations only partially utilizes this rich literature.
5 See Duygu Bazoğlu Sezer, “Turkish–Russian Relations a Decade Later: From Adversity to Managed Competition”, Perceptions, Vol. 6, No 1, 2001, pp. 79-99; also see Duygu Bazoğlu Sezer, “Turkish‐Russian Relations: The Challenges of Reconciling Geopolitical Competition with Economic Partnership”, Turkish Studies, Vol. 1, No 1, 2000, pp. 59-82.
6 Fiona Hill and Ömer Taşpınar, “Turkey and Russia: Axis of the Excluded?”, Survival, Vol. 48, No 1, 2006, pp. 81-92. 7 James W. Warhola and William A. Mitchell, “The Warming of Turkish-Russian Relations: Motives and Implications”, Demokratizatsiya, Vol. 14, No 1, 2006, p. 127.
8 Richard Sakwa, “Russia and Turkey: Rethinking Europe to Contest Outsider Status”, Russie. Nei. Visions, 2010, p. 51; and Richard Sakwa, “The Death of Europe? Continental Fates After Ukraine”, International Affairs, Vol. 91, No 3, 2015, pp. 553-579.
9 Ayşe Zarakol, After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
10 For such a perspective, see Evren Balta and Süheyla Demir, “History, Identity and Foreign Policy: Ottoman-Turkish Image in the Current History Textbooks of the Russian Federation”, BILIG, No 76, 2016, pp. 1-31.
11 For an excellent debate on Turkey’s and Russia’s role in the formation of European identity, see Viatceslav Morozov and Bahar Rumelili, “The External Constitution of European Identity: Russia and Turkey as Europe-Makers”, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 47, No 1, 2012, pp. 28-48.
12 Edward D. Mansfield and Jon C. Pevehouse, “Trade Blocs, Trade Flows, and International Conflict”, International Organization, 2000, Vol. 54, No 4, pp. 775-808.
13 Katherine Barbieri et al., “Sleeping with the Enemy: The Impact of War on Trade”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 36, No 4, 1999, pp. 463-479.
14 Öniş and Yılmaz, “Turkey and Russia in a Shifting Global Order”; see also Emre Ersen, “Turkish–Russian Relations in the New Century”, Özden Zeynep Oktav (ed.), Turkey in the 21st Century: Quest for a New Foreign Policy, London, Routledge, 2011, pp. 95-114.
15 For the importance of such approaches, see Emilie E. Hafner-Burton et al., “Network Analysis for International Relations”, International Organization, Vol. 63, No 3, 2009, pp. 559-592.
16 Ahmet İçduygu and Ayşem Biriz Karaçay, “The International Migration System Between Turkey and Russia: Project‐ Tied Migrant Workers in Moscow”, International Migration, Vol. 50, No 1, 2012, pp. 55-74; and Ayla Deniz and E. Murat Özgür, “Antalya’daki Rus Gelinler: Göçten Evliliğe, Evlilikten Göçe”, Sosyoloji Dergisi, Vol. 3, No 27, 2013, pp. 151-175.
17 Deniz Yükseker, “Shuttling Goods, Weaving Consumer Tastes: Informal Trade Between Turkey and Russia”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 31, No 1, 2007, pp. 60-72.
18 See for example, Di Paolo Biondani and Leo Sisti, “The Pipeline of the Three Regimes”, 20 April 2017, http://espresso. repubblica.it/inchieste/2017/04/18/news/the-pipeline-of-the-three-regimes-1.299786?refresh_ce (Accessed 20 June 2017).
19 See, for example, Stephen J. Flanagan, “The Turkey–Russia–Iran Nexus: Eurasian Power Dynamics”, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 36, No 1, 2013, pp. 163-178.
20 See Fearon for how domestic politics can be used as a tool for foreign policy analysis. James D. Fearon, “Domestic Politics, Foreign Policy, and Theories of International Relations”, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 1, No 1, 1998, pp. 289-313. For one of the few comparative analyses of Turkey and Russia and how Turkish and Russian domestic politics converge creating similar tendencies for foreign policy, see Sinan Birdal, “Tek Adamlaşma”, Özcan, Balta and Beşgül (eds.), Kuşku ile Komşuluk, pp. 321-343.
21 Micheal Burleigh. “The Sultan and the Tsar: Will the Imperial Ambitions of Russia’s Putin and Turkey’s Erdoğan will Spark a New World War”, Daily Mail, 15 February 2016, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3446089/The- Sultan-Tsar-imperial-ambitions-Russia-s-Putin-Turkey-s-Erdogan-spark-new-World-War-asks-historian-MICHAELBURLEIGH. html (Accessed 5 September 2017).
22 In analyzing Turkish-Russian relations, analytical eclecticism offers the advantages of downplaying unresolvable divides between the different research traditions and formulating problems that are wider in scope than the more narrowly delimited problems posed by adherents of competing research traditions. See Rudra Sil and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms Across Research Traditions”, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 8, No 2, 2010, pp. 411-12; and Rudra Sil, “Simplifying Pragmatism: From Social Theory to Problem-Driven Eclecticism”, International Studies Review, Vol. 11, No 3, 2009, pp. 648-652.
23 For example, see Behlül Özkan, “1945 Türkiye-SSCB Krizi: Dış Politikada Kurucu Mitin İnşası”, Özcan, Balta and Beşgül (eds.), Kuşku ile Komuşuluk, pp. 55-79; and Behlül Özkan, “The Cold War-era Origins of Islamism in Turkey and its Rise to Power”, Hudson Institute, 4 August 2017, https://www.hudson.org/research/13807-the-cold-war-era-originsof- islamism-in-turkey-and-its-rise-to-power (Accessed 6 September 2017).
24 Michael Burawoy, “Transition Without Transformation: Russia’s Involutionary Road to Capitalism”, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 15, No 2, 2001, pp. 269-290.
25 Aktürk, Türkiye ve Rusya İlişkilerinin Yükselişi ve Gerilemesi; Burawoy Transition without Transformation, p. 270 26 Ariel Cohen, “Engaged Realism: US Foreign Policy Toward the New Russia”, Harvard International Review, Vol. 19, No 1, Winter 1996/1997, pp. 32–35.
27 Kenneth M. Jensen, “Introduction”, Leon Aron and Kenneth M. Jensen (eds.), The Emergence of Russian Foreign Policy, Washington D.C., United States Institute of Peace Press, 1994, pp. 3-14.
28 Emrah Denizhan, “Türkiye’nin Kafkasya ve Orta Asya Politikası ve TİKA”, Sosyal ve Beşeri Bilimler Dergisi, Vol. 2, No 1, 2010, pp. 17-23.
29 Hakan Fidan and Rahman Nurdun, “Turkey’s Role in the Global Development Assistance Community: The Case of TIKA (International Cooperation and Development Agency)”, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Vol. 10, No 1, 2008, pp. 93-111.
30 “Sovyetlerin Dağılması Türkiye’yi Büyüttü”, Milliyet, 24 February 1992.
31 Andrei Zagorski, “Traditional Security Interests in the Caucasus and Central Asia: Perceptions and Realities”, Rjan Mennon et. al., (eds.), Russia, The Caucasus, and Central Asia: the 21st Century Security Environment, London, Routledge, 2016. pp. 63.

APA	BALTA E (2019). From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War. , 69 - 86.
Chicago	BALTA Evren From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War. (2019): 69 - 86.
MLA	BALTA Evren From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War. , 2019, ss.69 - 86.
AMA	BALTA E From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War. . 2019; 69 - 86.
Vancouver	BALTA E From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War. . 2019; 69 - 86.
IEEE	BALTA E "From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War." , ss.69 - 86, 2019.
ISNAD	BALTA, Evren. "From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War". (2019), 69-86.

APA	BALTA E (2019). From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War. Uluslararası İlişkiler, 16(63), 69 - 86.
Chicago	BALTA Evren From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War. Uluslararası İlişkiler 16, no.63 (2019): 69 - 86.
MLA	BALTA Evren From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War. Uluslararası İlişkiler, vol.16, no.63, 2019, ss.69 - 86.
AMA	BALTA E From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War. Uluslararası İlişkiler. 2019; 16(63): 69 - 86.
Vancouver	BALTA E From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War. Uluslararası İlişkiler. 2019; 16(63): 69 - 86.
IEEE	BALTA E "From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War." Uluslararası İlişkiler, 16, ss.69 - 86, 2019.
ISNAD	BALTA, Evren. "From Geopolitical Competition to Strategic Partnership: Turkey and Russia after The Cold War". Uluslararası İlişkiler 16/63 (2019), 69-86.