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Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies
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Turkey’s Balancing Act between East and West: A
Russian Perspective
Pavel Shlykov
To cite this article: Pavel Shlykov (25 Jan 2024): Turkey’s Balancing Act between East
and West: A Russian Perspective, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, DOI:
10.1080/19448953.2024.2308967
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2024.2308967
Published online: 25 Jan 2024.
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Turkey’s Balancing Act between East and West: A Russian
Perspective
Pavel Shlykov
Department of the Middle Eastern History, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University,
Moscow, Russia
ABSTRACT
The article analyses Russian ocial, scholarly and media discourses
on transformations in Turkey’s foreign policy in the 2000s–2020s.
Comparing perceptions of Russian political establishment and
international relations experts of Turkey’s assertive foreign policy
and changing relations with the West, Russia and Asia, it examines
the main features of Turkey’s balancing between the East and the
West throughout this period, and how various segments of Russian
society perceive(d) this balancing. The investigation covers the
extent to which Turkey’s foreign policy vis-a-vis the US, the EU
and Asia run counter to or correlate with Russia’s interests and
the implications for Russia of Turkey’s assertive foreign policy.
KEYWORDS
Turkey; foreign policy;
balancing; Russia; China; the
EU
Introduction
The end of the Cold War did not cause immediate changes in Turkey’s foreign policy.
Throughout the 1990s the Kemalist principles—the cornerstones of Turkish pro-
Western orientation during most of the 20
th
century, with their strong emphasis on
laicism and Westernisation—still framed this policy. However, in 2002 when Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (known by the Turkish acronym
AKP) came to power, Turkey began deviating from the Kemalist foreign policy
tradition.
1
Turkey’s aspiration to become a full-fledged EU member continued driving its
accelerated liberalization until the end of the 2000s. Since then, Turkey’s foreign policy
has acquired qualitatively new dimensions, with Islamic identity coming to the forefront
of Turkey’s international self-representation during the 2010s.
Transformations in the foreign policy of the ‘New Turkey’– Erdoğan’s 2010s term for
setting his regime in opposition to the old Kemalist Turkey
2
– provoked much scholarly
debate about the change in Ankara’s foreign policy orientation. Mass media and aca-
demic publications in the late 2000s—early 2010s increasingly emphasized Turkey’s
reorientation towards the East, its ‘neo-Ottoman’ policy
3
or, as Ariel Cohen called it,
‘leaving the West’.
4
Both ideas—neo-Ottomanism and de-Westernisation—have domi-
nated Russian expert discourse on Turkey and Turkish foreign policy since the late
2000s.
5
In 2008, Turkish political analyst Tarık Oğuzlu even suggested that Turkey’s
CONTACT Pavel Shlykov shlykov@iaas.msu.ru
JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2024.2308967
© 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
foreign policy was witnessing ‘Middle Easternization’.
6
The academic community, how-
ever, questioned his assessment, because Turkey’s foreign policy changes at that time
mainly suggested increasing Turkey’s diplomatic activities along the perimeter of its own
borders.
7
In the 2010s Turkey’s foreign policy entailed a new wave of changes. First, with
reduced US involvement in the Middle East, Turkey became much more proactive
beyond its traditional sphere of interest, the immediate neighbourhood. Second,
Turkey’s external economic relations significantly changed, with China joining Russia
and Germany as one of Turkey’s three main trade and economic partners in the early
2010s. Third, a combination of factors (the 2016 failed coup attempt, Erdoğan’s growing
grip on domestic and international affairs, Turkey’s rising disappointment with the
West) resulted in Turkey’s moving away from close association with the US and the
EU. Instead, it moved towards a more diversified foreign policy, with relations with
Russia, China and other Asian countries becoming important sources of Turkey’s
enhanced international status. Russian perception of this process is particularly impor-
tant because Russia’s 2022–2023 involvement in Ukraine made Turkey’s balancing act
much more evident than before.
The overall crisis in the European security architecture following the 2022 develop-
ments in Ukraine opened opportunities for Erdoğan’s diplomacy. Before 2022 Turkey
could use only conventional means of balancing such as simultaneous membership in
West-led and Asian multilateral institutions or advancing its regional position after
stronger counterparts (e.g., the US) retreated from or limited their participation in
regional conflicts. After 2022, due to its mediation efforts in the Ukrainian conflict,
Turkey as a middle power gained much more leverage at both regional and global levels.
Multiple studies detail and discuss Turkey’s balancing strategy in various contexts.
8
This research literature examines various perceptions of Turkey and Russia as neigh-
bours and historical antagonists, including periods of close relations.
9
However, none of
these studies present a comprehensive assessment of Russia’s changing perception of
Turkey’s foreign policy throughout the 2000–2020s.
Bridging this analytical gap, this article argues that the 2000–2020s changes in
Turkey’s foreign policy went through three periods, each demonstrating a particular
correlation between transatlantic and Asian vectors. During each period, Turkey devel-
oped and enhanced the balancing of its foreign policies, leaving them well-refined by the
2020s.
Methodologically, the article divides Turkey’s foreign policy into three periods: the
2000s (mainly pro-Western and EU-driven), 2010–2015 (changes after the Arab Spring),
and 2016–2023 (post-coup-attempt transformations). For each period, the article ana-
lyses the shifts in Turkey’s foreign policy through the prism of Russian official, scholarly
and broader public discourses. It investigates the official discourse through Russian
strategic documents (all generations of foreign policy concepts and national security
strategies), Russia-Turkey bilateral documents, and opinions voiced publicly by high-
level Russian officials. For expert discourse, the article examines the most influential
public intellectuals commenting on Turkey’s foreign policy and Russian-Turkish
relations.
Analysing the Russian media entailed sampling the nine most influential newspapers
and journals, with clearly defined political viewpoints and individual attitudes towards
2P. SHLYKOV
Russian political authorities and stable readerships. This sample representatively reflects
the spectrum of public opinion (pro-governmental, left, centrist, liberal). The content
analysis of the newspapers and journals covered articles, editorials, opinion pieces, etc.
(hereafter, ‘articles’) focused on Turkish foreign policy during the three periods under
examination.
The article starts by presenting the factors that conditioned Russia’s assessments of
Turkey in the 2000s. It then defines the logic of Russia’s attitude towards Turkey in the
2010s and details Russia’s perceptions of Turkey’s foreign policy as they emerged from
the 2016–2023 policy changes.
Shifts in Russian perceptions of Turkey’s foreign policy in the 2000s
Early this century Turkey’s foreign policy focussed primarily on reacting to increasing US
activity in the Middle East. The 11 September 2001 terror attack, the following war on
terror in Afghanistan (waged by an international coalition), and the 2003 US invasion of
Iraq shattered the regional power balance of the late 1990s. Paradoxically, the main
security challenge for Turkey in the 2000s was the regional presence of its main military
ally, the US, which contributed to the creation of Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq and
heavily relied on the Kurds in their military campaign against Saddam Hussein’s regime.
For Turkey, these actions signalled a new trigger for the activities of the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK) (which Turkey denounced as a terrorist organization in 1997) in
Turkey itself and a limitation of its foreign policy actions in the Middle East. Therefore,
on 1 March 2003, the Turkish Parliament de facto blocked the decision of US and
Turkish heads of state to let the US use Turkish military bases for sending American
troops to Iraq.
10
Nevertheless, not intending to entirely reject its pro-Western course, the Turkish
government used very moderate rhetoric towards US actions in Iraq, trying not to
become an outsider in the post-war settlement there.
11
However, the 1 March 2003
action demonstrated the rise of anti-American sentiments in the Turkish political estab-
lishment. The divergence over the Kurds seriously limited the US and Turkey’s abilities
to deepen regional security cooperation. Having not secured US support for its approach
to the PKK,
12
Turkey turned for help from the EU mechanisms in its Common Foreign
and Security Policy. By 2007 Turkey had signed the majority of declarations constituting
the foundation of this EU pillar.
13
By moving closer to the EU, Erdoğan tried to simultaneously achieve several aims. The
EU democratization requirement allowed him to reduce the influence of the army and
military elite in Turkish politics. Closer cooperation with the EU also compensated for
US unwillingness to support Turkey in its struggle against the PKK. In balancing between
the US and the EU, both part of the West, Erdoğan found no radical foreign policy
movements necessary. Moreover, when the AKP came to power in 2002, the cooperation
infrastructure with the EU was already in place. Reforms for complying with the condi-
tions for joining the EU (i.e., the Copenhagen criteria) started in 2002,
14
and in 2005
Turkey and the EU launched negotiations on Turkey’s bid for EU membership.
In the mid-2000s Turkish foreign policy started further developing. The Iraqi Kurds’
success in creating their autonomous region in Iraq pushed Turkey to normalize rela-
tions with Syria and Iran.
15
Consequently, the Middle East started becoming a much
JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 3
more important Turkish foreign policy priority. In the 2000s, at multiple international
fora, Turkey actively promoted itself as a link between the Middle East and Europe. One
of the most prominent of these efforts was the Alliance of Civilizations initiative, a global
platform for intercultural dialogue, proposed by Erdoğan and his Spanish counterpart
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2004 at the 59
th
General Assembly of the United
Nations.
Turkish diplomacy made multiple efforts to diversify its geographic participation.
In 2005 it became an observer in the African Union and the Arab League. In 2008
Turkey became a strategic dialogue partner of the Cooperation Council for the Arab
States of the Gulf, in 2010 joined the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast
Asia—a cornerstone document for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN)—and in 2011 applied for dialogue partner status in the Shanghai
Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
16
In the early 2000s doctrinal changes in foreign policy planning also took place.
Turkey, no longer regarding itself as a flank country of the Cold War period,
aspired to become a geopolitical centre for the Balkans, the Black Sea region, the
Middle East and the Mediterranean. A principal architect of Turkey’s new foreign
policy, Ahmet Davutoğlu (Erdoğan’s main counsellor on foreign policy issues in
2002–2009, Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2009–2014 and Prime Minister in 2014–
2016), stressed the ambivalence of Turkey’s ‘centrality’, a word implying both
advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, Turkey was part of a very wide-
stretching geographical area with access to many regions of the world.
17
On the
other hand, Turkey’s ‘strategic depth’ (Davutoğlu’s term) meant that from histor-
ical, geopolitical and strategic standpoints, Turkey had to be proactive in many
regions and multilateral fora, carefully synchronizing its actions in multiple
directions.
For Russian–Turkish relations, Davutoğlu’s foreign policy vision meant the end of the
ideological limitations of the past century. Moreover, his doctrine of strategic depth
corresponded well with both Turkey’s inclusion in multiple geopolitical partnerships in
Eurasia and Russia’s idea of building such partnerships there. On the operational level,
both countries remained close in their desire to maintain the status quo in the areas of
their shared neighbourhood.
In the multilateral fora Turkey supported Russia’s application for observer status in
the then-Organisation of the Islamic Conference
18
and Russia’s aspiration to join the
World Trade Organization. Turkey also became Russia’s key partner in such frameworks
as the Group of Strategic Vision ‘Russia—Islamic World’. In contrast, Russia’s support
for Turkey’s initiatives in the 2000s was not as deep. Moscow vetoed Kofi Annan’s plan
for the unification of Cyprus in 2004 and was sceptical about Turkey’s EU application. In
2005, when Brussels and Ankara started official talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin
characterized Turkey’s move towards the EU as potentially limiting further development
of Russia–Turkey relations.
19
A cautious attitude towards Turkey and even disapproval of the flexibility embodied in
the Turkish political culture resonated at different levels of Russia’s relations with
Turkey. Despite Russia’s growing cooperation with Turkey and an emerging vision of
a partnership, Turkey’s NATO membership constrained any possibilities of strategic
trust between the two countries. Thus, many Russian IR analysts at the time positively
4P. SHLYKOV
perceived the way Moscow and Ankara were developing their relations while criticizing
Turkey for its leadership ambitions.
20
Given that, before 2010, a Turkish National security policy document (Milli Güvenlik
Siyaset Belgesi) listed Russia as a potential threat,
21
Russian scholars in the 2000s
sceptically assessed Russian–Turkish relations. Hence, then-chair of the Carnegie
Moscow Centre’s Religion, Society, and Security Programme, Alexey Malashenko,
noted that ‘with all current charm of Russian–Turkish relations today, with all good
will demonstrated by Turkey, it will remain Russia’s serious competitor. Turkish rising
presence in the Southern Caucasus is already visible. It will lead to contradictions not
only about Nagorno-Karabakh and natural gas but also to more complex
controversies.’
22
The 2000 Russian Foreign Policy Concept, a document defining Russia’s key
foreign policy priorities, spoke about China, India, Japan, Iran, and even
Afghanistan but not Turkey. Rather, this Concept aimed at building a zone of
peace, stability and good neighbours across the Middle East and Mediterranean,
stating the necessity of securing Russia’s economic interests in terms of energy
transportation routes.
23
The 2008 Foreign Policy Concept mentioned Turkey only
after detailing Russia’s relations with China, India, the SCO and ASEAN: ‘Russia is
going to develop further its relations with Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Iran, Saudi Arabia,
Syria, Libya, Pakistan and other leading regional states in bilateral and multilateral
frameworks’.
24
In contrast, the 2009 Russian National Security Strategy did not
mention Turkey even in the Middle Eastern context.
25
However, Russia’s ambivalent attitude did not prevent Turkey from advancing
a number of bilateral projects. In 2009–2010 Russia and Turkey agreed on to build the
Akkuyu nuclear power plant and Samsun—Ceyhan oil pipeline and launched a visa-free
regime. These same years witnessed the creation of the High-Level Cooperation Council
and an emerging discourse on strategic partnership and a debate on the practical ways of
substantiating it.
The mass media-named ‘breakthrough agreements’ benefitted Turkey more than
Russia. The Akkuyu nuclear power plant, both costly and risky, ran counter to Russia’s
traditional abstention from developing nuclear energy projects in countries importing
Russian gas. A visa-free regime for short-term trips, even though widely publicized in
Russia, primarily served Turkish interests: Russian citizens could easily obtain a visa on
arrival at the Turkish airports. For Turkey, facilitating its citizens’ business trips to Russia
(the ratio of Russian travellers to Turkey to Turkish travellers to Russia was 30 to 1) and
securing its leadership position in the Russian tourist market was important. In contrast,
for Russia, large-scale cooperation projects with Turkey meant primarily political, not
economic, investments.
When Russia’s relations with the West started deteriorating in the 2000s and 2010s,
Turkey consistently chose cooperation with Russia in multiple spheres, deeming them
beneficial both economically and geopolitically. Russian officials and experts mentioned
the possibility that Turkey ‘could join the Eurasian club’ (Mikhail Margelov, then
Chairman of the Russian Federation Council Committee on International Affairs) as
early as the mid-2000s.
26
By the end of that decade, some, like then-Director of the
Moscow Carnegie Centre, Dmitry Trenin, considered Turkey a potential stabilizing
factor for the Global South.
27
Fyodor Lukianov, prominent public intellectual and editor-
JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 5
in-chief of a leading Russian IR journal, Russia in Global Affairs, noted that Turkey was
ready to ‘reject its long standing political dogma, i.e., aspiration to join Europe and the
EU’
28
and was developing a new foreign policy philosophy appropriate for a regional
power about to set its own rules of the game.
29
Progressive cooperation between Russia and Turkey did not mean the absence of
disagreements, particularly over Cyprus (2004), the Syrian crisis (2011) and US anti-
missile systems on Turkish soil (2013–2015).
30
However, at that time these disagreements
were tactical, not strategic. They prevented neither country from maintaining political
dialogue, nor did they disrupt the emerging pattern of mutual respect for one another’s
political decisions. Indeed, the ability to mitigate the negative effects of international
changes on their bilateral relations reflected a certain level of robustness in Russian–
Turkish relations.
Turkey’s foreign policy in 2010–2015 and the transformations of Russia’s
views
The aftermath of the 2008–2009 world economic crisis, the Arab Spring and Erdoğan’s
efforts to consolidate his political regime defined Turkey’s foreign policy transformation
in the first half of the 2010s. The world economic crisis shattered US dominance in global
politics in general and the Middle East in particular. Elected in 2009, US President
Obama quickly ended the extremely costly war in Iraq and prioritized the US ‘pivot to
Asia’. These changes meant a reduced interest in Turkey’s immediate neighbourhood, the
Middle East. At the same time the financial crisis, starting in Greece and Ireland, then
engulfing almost all the Eurozone, made the leading EU states focus on their internal
problems, leading to the rise of Euroscepticism in Europe and elsewhere.
31
Therefore,
Turkey could no longer expect to maintain the same cooperation level with the EU on
regional security issues.
Meanwhile, security challenges along the perimeter of Turkey’s borders in the 2010s
were growing. The 2011 Arab Spring events, which destabilized most Middle Eastern
states and even caused civil war in Syria, urged Turkey to revise its national security
strategy and foreign policy. Thus, the previously established modus operandi in Turkey’s
relations with the Middle East—specifically with Israel, Iran and Syria—no longer
worked.
Domestic political changes became another important driver of Turkey’s foreign
policy transformations. Since the late 2000s Erdoğan had been constructing
a hierarchical political power structure, fully answerable to him, thereby seriously limit-
ing the influence of the army elite and old bureaucracy. Consequently, Turkey’s foreign
policy started deviating from classic realism towards Davutoğlu’s ‘strategic depth’:
Turkey was aiming at creating a system of geopolitical coordinates for the Middle East
as an alternative to the Western one, with increasing reference to its Ottoman cultural
and historical heritage. Turkey also paid particular attention to building ties with
moderate Islamist forces across the region, trying to unite them in a network loyal to
Turkey.
32
Some, like several Turkey-supported groups of the Syrian opposition, later on
proved to be jihadists, a revelation provoking strong criticism from the West.
33
As, by the early 2010s, Turkey’s cooperation with the US and the EU had become
peripheral to solving Turkey’s practical foreign policy aims, Erdoğan handled all criticism
6P. SHLYKOV
by increasing his anti-Western rhetoric and enhancing economic and military–political
partnership with Russia and China. In 2012 Turkey became the only NATO member to
receive dialogue partner status in the SCO, thereby institutionalizing its relations with
both countries. This quest for alternative partners became most visible in Turkey’s
attempt to develop its air defence capacity by, first, negotiating an air defence missile
system FD-2000 acquisition from China and later considering purchasing the Russian
S-400 missile complex. Thus, Turkey displayed to the West its abilities at finding
alternative partners at a time when its Western partners were not ready to take
Turkey’s interests seriously.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had highly praised Turkey’s ‘independent foreign
policy’ and its ability ‘not to sacrifice its own interests for the sake of other states’
ambitions’.
34
Nonetheless, even though bilateral cooperation during this period was
growing in many spheres,
35
the Russian 2013 Foreign Policy Concept did not mention
Turkey and only implicitly considered it a member of the G20, a structure on which
Russia put high hopes for ensuring its role in global governance.
36
More actively turning to Eurasianism, Turkey demonstrated to the West the avail-
ability of both practical and ideological alternatives. Despite multiple streams of thought
in Turkish Eurasianism,
37
ranging from radical to moderate, all Turkish Eurasianists
stressed the need for Turkey to focus more on its own strategic interests in Eurasia by
building closer ties with Russia, China and Iran. However, the realities of further
implementing the Eurasianist alternative proved difficult: no immediate follow-up break-
throughs in Turkey’s relations with China or Russia took place. Turkey continued to
accuse China of oppressing the Uyghurs, while China argued that Turkey was turning
a blind eye on terrorists coming to Xinjiang.
During the G20 summit in Turkey on 15–16 November 2015, Erdoğan had called
Russian–Turkish relations a strategic partnership. But just over a week later, a fighter jet
crisis plummeted Russian–Turkish relations to their lowest point in the post-Cold War
period. The official Turkish version of the 24 November 2015 incident is that a Russian
tactical bomber Su-24 violated Turkish airspace near its border with Syria for 17 seconds
and that a Turkish F-16 fighter shot it down.
38
Russia completely denied violating
Turkish airspace. This crisis constituted a negative moment in the Russian political elite’s
increasingly positive assessments of Turkish foreign policy. Moreover, a New National
Security Strategy that Russia issued one month after the fighter jet incident ignored
Turkey, mentioning only i) Russia’s anxiety about US anti-missile components place-
ment in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East (art. 15) and ii) migration flows, which
challenged NATO and the EU-centred regional security system (art. 16).
39
Indeed, Vladimir Putin labelled the downing of the Russian fighter jet a ‘stab in the
back’ and called Turkey ‘the main financier and supplier of weapons to ISIS and other
terrorist forces in Syria and Iraq’.
40
By mid-2016 Turkish authorities clearly saw that any
further decline in relations with Russia could not only lead to serious economic losses but
also create significant risks for its national security: without interactions with Russia,
Turkey’s ability to protect its border with Syria from the infiltration of militant radicals
would be extremely difficult.
41
In June 2016, Erdoğan wrote Putin ‘a letter of apology’ (as
both Russian officials and media called it), which press secretary of Turkish President
İbrahim Kalın handed to Vladimir Putin at the SCO summit in Tashkent, with the
assistance of Kazakhstan’s then President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
42
Putin accepted
JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 7
Erdoğan’s ‘apologies’ and his proposal to restart the strategic partnership with ‘readiness
for any initiative’.
Russian public discourse in the early 2010s perceived Turkey’s foreign policy fluctua-
tions ambivalently. This study’s content analysis of the nine most influential Russian
newspapers (Nezavisimaya Gazeta; Kommersant; Moskovskij Komsomolets; Izvestia;
Rossiyskaya Gazeta; Vedomosti; Zavtra; Sovetskaya Rossiya; Expert; and Novaya
Gazeta) indicates a visible increase of mass media articles focusing on Turkey’s new
foreign policy directions in the 2010s (see Figure 1).
At the same time, the spectrum of assessments of Turkey as a ‘regional player with its
own opinion concerning all international issues’ (political analyst Alexander Rahr)
43
had
also become very wide, varying from positive to negative. Russian journalists started
writing about ‘neo-pan-Turkism’
44
and ‘new interesting neo-Ottoman ideology’ (Mikhail
Zygar) ,
45
actively introducing this notion to the liberal and left-spectrum press.
46
Even
though many, like Mikhail Margelov, stated that ‘today, Turkish imperialism . . . is as
absurd and ridiculous as Russian imperialism is . . . ’,
47
the revival of pan-Turkism still
raised some concern because it ‘resonated well in Central Asia’ (Konstantin Kosachev,
then Head of the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs,
Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation).
48
Moreover,
such left-wing writers as Alexander Prokhanov argued that Turkey ‘was ready to establish
itself firmly in the Caucasian republics and Russian Northern Caucasus’.
49
Registering Turkey’s rising interest in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa
(Mikhail Margelov)
50
and such ‘non-Western-centric international organizations’ as
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400 2000-2010 2011-2015 2016-2022
Nezavisimaya Gazeta, liberal privately owned daily, moderately critical towards the government
Kommersant, liberal news and business-oriented daily, a most influential political newspaper
Moskovskij Komsomolets, popular daily with a circulation approaching one million, known for topical
reporting on Russian politics and society
Izvestia, the oldest popular daily, describes itself as a ‘national newspaper’, mostly pro-government
Rossiyskaya Gazeta, government-owned official daily
Vedomosti, daily financial and analytical newspaper, the most important business newspaper
Zavtra, radical conservative newspaper, a highly influential press organ of the Russian opposition
Sovetskaya Rossiya, main opposition newspaper of the Communist party
Expert, moderately liberal pro-government weekly business magazine
Novaya Gazeta, pro-opposition independent daily, known for its investigative journalism
Figure 1. Publications about Turkey, Ankara’s foreign policy and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in various
Russian media. Source: compiled by the author.
8P. SHLYKOV
the SCO (journalist and China specialist Alexander Gabuev),
51
many political experts
also observed that ‘Turkey’s current foreign policy activities do not receive a welcoming
response’ (Alexey Malashenko).
52
Military analysts assessed the situation even more
negatively. Russian General Leonid Ivashov and Colonel Victor Barenets, for example
primarily emphasized the potential of Turkey, ‘a NATO member with fivefold superiority
over the Russian fleet in the Black Sea [before 2015]’,
53
to become an ‘unfriendly state . . .
preparing to actively work in the Northern Caucasus against Russia and to fill Russian gas
pipelines with gas from Qatar’.
54
In the early 2020s those Russian experts who tended to perceive Turkish foreign policy
moderately positively stressed that, ‘not long ago a super-loyal member of NATO’,
55
Turkey was now becoming more independent in its actions (Fyodor Lukyanov, Dmitry
Trenin).
56
They assessed tensions in Turkey’s relations with Europe as a sign of Turkey’s
and Russia’s common destiny, ‘both for ages being participants of European history and
politics but never having the chance to become Europe’s core and remaining on the
periphery of those countries that considered themselves to be truly European’ (Fyodor
Lukyanov).
57
In this context, Russian political scientist and Head of the Council on
Foreign and Defence Policy Sergei Karaganov even proposed that Russia and Turkey
form ‘a new Union of Europe’.
58
Thus, Turkey’s rising political and economic profile, its desire to turn itself into an
energy hub between Asia and Europe
59
and its ambition to become less restricted by
formal alliances such as NATO (while not withdrawing from it)
60
made many believe
that Turkey viewed Russia as a useful instrument for influencing its Western partners.
61
Turkey’s strategic autonomy and foreign policy in the late 2010s—early
2020s through the Russian prism
The failed coup of 15 July 2016, by revealing a lack of unanimous support for Erdoğan’s
regime in the West, became another watershed for ‘New Turkey’s’ foreign policy.
Disappointment with the liberal world order in general and the West in particular was
further aggravated when, in 2019, the US imposed sanctions on Turkey for its military
operation in Northern Syria.
With rising international uncertainty, Turkey—like some Asian and Latin American
countries and even the EU—injected the idea of strategic autonomy into its foreign
policy. Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu explained the rationale for
enhancing Turkey’s strategic autonomy by referring to the end of the unipolar world. In
a situation with the liberal world order in crisis and existing international institutions no
longer properly functioning, he argued, ‘Turkey with its geopolitical potential had to
propose new ideas, new initiatives, and new approaches’.
62
As new non-Western frame-
works such as the SCO and BRICS (an international grouping of Brazil, Russia, India,
China and South Africa) appeared, Turkey saw opportunities for balancing more deli-
cately without fully rejecting cooperation with NATO or the EU.
Practically achieving strategic autonomy entailed three objectives: i) technological
development of national military industry, ii) elaboration of Turkey’s Islamic identity,
and iii) creation of a network of flexible international alliances with those countries who
had similar or close interests with Turkey in particular areas.
JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 9
Erdoğan understood developing the national military industrial complex as an
imperative contribution to national security in a situation of growing geopolitical risks.
In 2020 he proudly stated that, when the AKP was in power, Turkey had reduced its
dependence on foreign military technologies from 70% to 30%, the number of Turkish
companies fulfilling government military contracts increased from 50 (in 2000) to over
1500 (in 2020), and Turkish military exports rose from $248 million to more than
$3 billion.
63
Moreover, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute from the mid-2010s to 2021 Turkey reduced its arms imports by almost 60%,
and, from the US, by 80%. Hence, by 2022 Turkey dropped from the 3
rd
largest US arms
importer to the 19
th
.
64
Increasing military potential enabled Turkey to project its power
along the perimeter of its borders and beyond, by opening military bases in Qatar (2015),
Syria (2016) and Somalia (2017), and launching military operations in Syria (2016–2022)
and Libya (2019). It maintained its military presence in Iraq and Northern Cyprus and
provided active military and technological help to Azerbaijan during its 2020 war with
Armenia.
65
Islamic identity also became important for Erdoğan’s foreign policy positioning of
Turkey as the leader of the Islamic world and Islamic ummah
66
and, consequently,
a leading country of the Global South. Along with the BRICS countries, Turkey wanted
to become a major centre in the polycentric world order.
67
Following this logic, Turkey
seriously enhanced its development aid (from $85 million in 2002 to $9 billion in 2020),
68
including to Islamic countries involved in confrontations with the West.
Erdoğan also viewed enhanced relations with Russia and China as serving Turkey’s
aims of securing strategic autonomy by reducing Turkey’s comprehensive economic and
security dependence on the West. In the 2010s Russia and China became Turkey’s
number two and three main trade and economic partners (after Germany). Both
expressed support for Turkey after the 2016 failed coup. In contrast to the US and the
EU, Beijing even sent a delegation headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Ming to
Ankara immediately after the coup attempt.
69
During Erdoğan’s rule Turkey-China trade
increased by almost 20% (from $1.6 billion in the early 2000s to $32.5 billion in 2021)
while Chinese firms contracted to build Turkey’s high speed railroad connecting Ankara
and Istanbul. Turkey wholeheartedly supported China’s 2013 Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI), an ambitious infrastructure connectivity project, with Erdoğan calling it ‘a poli-
tical and economic basis for the new era of stability and prosperity in the region’.
70
Turkey also advanced its positions in non-Western multilateral organizations. In 2018
Turkey represented the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation at the BRICS Summit in
Johannesburg, where Erdoğan spoke about Turkey as a ‘potential BRICS member’
71
and
as a country willing to enhance trade, investment and technological cooperation with
BRICS.
72
In 2019, addressing the annual conference of Turkish ambassadors, Mevlüt
Çavuşoğlu proclaimed a new Turkish initiative, ‘Asia again’ (Yeniden Asya Açılımı), for
reemphasising economic partnerships with the leading Asian powers.
73
Still remaining a NATO member and Western key geopolitical ally in the Middle East,
Turkey nevertheless continued diversifying its international relations, trying to keep
receiving benefits from its multiple partners despite the international contradictions.
For example, İbrahim Kalın explained that, in the 2022–2023 Ukraine conflict, Turkey—
which had relations with both Russia and Ukraine—could not take sides and had to
continue dialogue with all involved parties to stop it.
74
10 P. SHLYKOV
Meanwhile, at the start of this period, mid-2010s Russian foreign policy official,
scholarly and media discourses reflected the ongoing transformations in Turkey’s foreign
policy. The number of articles on Turkey in all the Russian media demonstrated
a twofold increase from previous periods (see Figure 1). These articles concentrated on
the proliferation of Turkey’s foreign policy directions. The number of articles about
Turkey’s non-Western partners greatly increased over those in the early 2010s. This
study’s content analysis classified Russian reporting on Turkey, by subject, into eight
groups (the US, NATO, the EU, China, Asia, Africa, SCO, BRICS) within three periods
(2000–2010, 2011–2015, 2016–2022). The analysis demonstrates the growing complexity
of Turkey’s foreign policy (Figure 2).
Russian expert assessments ranged from cautious and negative, especially for Turkey’s
actions in Syria, Libya, Azerbaijan and Ukraine, to highly positive, praising Turkey’s
decision not to join the West in sanctioning Russia after February 2022. Certain assess-
ments of Turkey as ‘an independent and assertive player’
75
with ‘wide-range capabilities
beyond the Middle East’
76
demonstrated continuity. Many Russian scholars emphasized
the fact that Turkey managed to enhance its influence in the international arena at a time
when no key players had taken Turkey into account
77
and to demonstrate multi-vector
foreign policy through engagement in Eurasian affairs and cooperation with Russia.
78
However, in the expert discourse, some new elements emerged, particularly about the
mutual interdependence of Russia and Turkey at multiple levels and in many spheres.
For example, the ‘Turkish stream’ pipeline increased Turkey’s dependence on Russian
gas, which even before its construction had constituted over half of Turkish gas
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
2202-61025102-11020102-0002
US NATO EU China Asia Africa SCO BRICS
Figure 2. Publications on various directions of Turkish foreign policy in nine leading Russian media
(Izvestia, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Kommersant, Vedomosti, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Sovetskaya Rossiya, Zavtra,
Novaya Gazeta, Expert). Source: compiled by the author.
JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 11
consumption. At the same time Russia became dependent on Turkey for organizing its
energy exports to Southeast Europe.
79
Yet some Russian media expressed concern that
‘the Turkish leader might use Putin’s problems with the West for his own interests
whenever they diverged from Russia’s’.
80
Both the Russian expert and official discourses emphasized several developments
bringing Russia and Turkey closer together in the late 2010s—early 2020s. First,
public intellectuals such as Fyodor Lukyanov viewed Turkey as a state waging its
own war in the Middle East, where its NATO allies had no wish to re-engage.
81
Second, officials such as Russian Ambassador to Turkey Alexey Yerkhov emphasized
that the American sanctions imposed on Turkey ‘catalysed closer Russia-Turkey-EU
cooperation’.
82
Some even wanted to see signs of internal cleavages in Turkey’s
frictions with NATO.
83
Russian President Putin’s rhetoric towards Erdoğan became more complimentary in
the late 2010s—early 2020s. In a 2020 press conference, Putin characterized Erdoğan as
a ‘man of his word’, even though Russian and Turkish views might not always coincide.
84
Later Putin constantly stressed that despite difficult talks between Moscow and Ankara,
both parties observed their eventual agreements.
85
However, Russian official documents did not immediately reflect this personal empa-
thy or the overall positive developments in Russia–Turkey relations. The 2016 Foreign
Policy Concept avoided mentioning Turkey, referring only to the G20 and the need for
stabilizing the Middle East through political and diplomatic means.
86
The 2021 National
Security Strategy echoed this macro-regional approach without speaking about the
importance of Russia–Turkey cooperation in a situation of ‘weakened system of global
and regional security’ (art. 37).
87
Yet discourse changes occurred in the 2023 Foreign
Policy Concept (adopted after almost a year of conflict in Ukraine), which mentioned
Russia’s aim to strengthen its ‘multifaced and mutually beneficial partnership’ with
Turkey—but while not calling it a strategic partnership.
88
Conclusion
This analysis has shown that the past two decades have witnessed significant shifts in
Turkey’s foreign policy and the emergence of Turkey’s more strongly balancing between,
on one hand, its Western allies, and, on the other, Russia and rising powers such as
China. Turkey’s most striking political stratagem was that, despite its discontent with the
West, growing economic and infrastructural cooperation with China, and segmented
participation in SCO or BRICS activities, it never rejected its membership in NATO or
fully stopped wanting to join the EU. This aspect of Turkey’s foreign policy made Russia
constantly cautious about entering a full-fledged strategic partnership with Turkey, even
though ‘strategic partnership’ had entered the official discourse by the early 2010s.
Hence, in Russian strategic documents related to its foreign policy and national security,
Turkey was never mentioned as a structurally important direction of Russian’s foreign
policy, and Russian academic and mass media articles reflected this ambiguity.
However, the challenges that the two countries faced in the 2010s (the conflict of
interests in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, the 2015 fighter jet crisis, the 2016 failed
coup attempt in Turkey, the 2022 conflict in Ukraine) made them seriously reconsider
their relations. An obvious paradox of the new model of Russian–Turkish relations
12 P. SHLYKOV
emerging from the 2010s dynamic was their conflicting approaches to many regional
security issues. Yet their divergent visions of regional problems have not become
a stumbling block for political dialogue and have even reinforced cooperation on these
issues.
Consequently, in the late 2010s and early 2020s, Turkey attracted increasingly vigor-
ous attention at all levels of Russian foreign policy analysis. Indeed, while Russian experts
and the media were registering the rising diversification of Turkey’s foreign policy, the
official discourse singled out Turkey as a much more reliable partner than the West.
Notes
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JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 13
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14 P. SHLYKOV
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JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 15
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JOURNAL OF BALKAN AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 17
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work was supported by the CATS Network [22050].
ORCID
Pavel Shlykov http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0331-430X
18 P. SHLYKOV
