The Turkish-Russian relations have historically been characterized by competition and conflict in several arenas, including the Balkans, the Black Sea, and the Caucasus. Tensions continued between the two countries after the end of World War II, as Moscow asked Ankara to give it the city of Kars in eastern Anatolia and to reconsider the transit agreements in the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, which prompted Turkey, In 1952, to join NATO to protect it from Soviet threats. During the Cold War, Ankara continued to move within Western strategies, limiting its role to acting as a barrier to Moscow's expansion towards the warm seas, in parallel with neglecting the historical arenas of influence in the Balkans, Central Asia and North Africa.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, turned the scene upside down;
Turkey found in front of it vast geopolitical vacuum spaces that it invested to open up externally, especially with the arrival of the Justice and Development Party to power in 2002. The party, led by Erdogan, adopted a flexible foreign policy that was adopted during the first decade of his rule on zeroing problems with neighboring countries, and thus a new era began in Turkish relations. - Russia, specifically after the Turkish Parliament refused to allow the US army, in 2003, to use Turkish lands and airspace in the invasion of Iraq, which sent a message to Moscow that Ankara had become independent policies away from the Western bloc, and then Putin visited Turkey, in 2004, on his first visit President of the Russian Federation since the visit of the Soviet President, Podgorny, in 1972 (1).
The political, economic and commercial relations between Turkey and Russia have deepened, especially in the field of energy transfer, although competition between them remained in many files such as Syria, Libya, Cyprus and Nagorno-Karabakh, but these differences remained within an area acceptable to both parties, which ensured that they quickly overcome the crisis of Turkey's shooting down of a plane A Russian warship in 2015 near the Syrian border;
Close relations were restored again, especially after Putin stood next to the Turkish President in the face of the military coup, in 2016, and then the cooperation between the two countries moved to the square of military relations with Ankara’s purchase, in 2019, of the Russian S-400 air defense system despite US threats and sanctions regarding the completion of those Deal.
On the other hand, Turkey enjoyed close relations with Ukraine dating back to the Ottoman era, when the Ottomans allied themselves with the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Crimean Tatars against the Russian Empire (2).
Following Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union, Turkey signed a protocol to establish diplomatic relations with it in February 1992(3). Ukraine's recognition of the rights of the Crimean Tatars of Sunni Muslim background, and granting them the right to autonomy, contributed to building confidence between the two countries (4).
Over time, Turkish-Ukrainian relations deepened on the economic, commercial, political, and security levels.
Despite Turkey's refusal to recognize Russia's annexation of the Crimea, and its emphasis on the need to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine, over the past years, Ankara has maintained its relations with Moscow.
The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine put Turkey in the grips of a pincer, with it enjoying strong relations with both sides of the war.
Despite Turkey's refusal since 2014 to recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, and its emphasis on the need to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine, in recent years Ankara has maintained its relations with Moscow, and has not been involved in imposing any economic sanctions on Russia against the background of its role in the secession of Lugansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Rather, the two countries engaged together in the “Turkish Stream” pipeline project, which entered the operational phase in 2020, transporting gas from Russia to Turkey and the Balkans away from Ukraine, which for years was the main transit line for Russian gas to Europe.
The recent war pushed Turkey to take a more severe stance against the Russian invasion. In addition to its official condemnation of the invasion;
Erdogan stressed that NATO must take a more firm stance on developments in Ukraine (5), and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced that his country had notified all countries bordering and non-roverning the Black Sea not to allow warships to pass through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, in light of the crisis. The circuit between Russia and Ukraine.
He said that Turkey "has the authority to prevent the transit of warships of the warring countries even if it is not a party to the war", and that his country "has abided by what is stipulated in the Montreux Treaty."
These measures come in light of Turkey's vision of several threats posed by the Russian invasion, most notably:
First: the Black Sea and the straits
Turkey shares with Ukraine and Russia the Black Sea coast along with Bulgaria, Georgia and Romania.
After the end of the Cold War, Ankara deliberately dealt with the countries bordering on its coast within the areas of economic cooperation and confidence-building measures without considering the Black Sea as containing a tangible threat compared to the threats posed by the Kurdistan Workers Party to Turkish security (6).
However, the Turkish perception of threats has changed in recent years, with Moscow expanding its influence in the Black Sea with gradual and violent steps.
The Black Sea is located within the Russian southern military region, which oversees a theater of operations covering the North Caucasus, the Black Sea, and the Caspian Sea, and under its supervision, several measures have been implemented that reveal Russia's expansionist ambitions in the post-Soviet space and the Mediterranean.
In 2013, Russia re-allocated a naval force to operate in the Mediterranean after the precedent of dismantling the Soviet Fifth Fleet specialized in operating in the Mediterranean in 1992, and then in 2014, Moscow carved off the Crimea from Ukraine (7), which provided Moscow with a base A strategic navy in Sevastopol in the Crimea represents the second most important point in the Black Sea after the Turkish straits, and allows Moscow to launch to the Mediterranean through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits.
A Russian Navy submarine crosses the Bosphorus on its way to the Black Sea (Getty Images)
The next step came through the Russian intervention in Syria, in 2015, to make the Black Sea the logistical lifeline for the Russian forces in Syria (8).
The Russian intervention has undermined the effectiveness of the Turkish role in Syria.
Later, by 2017, Moscow allocated most of the modern warships of the Black Sea Fleet to work within the force of the Mediterranean Fleet, which enhanced Russian influence in that vital region where Ankara's interests conflict with Moscow's interests in several files such as Cyprus and Libya.
When we join the scene in Crimea and Ukraine with the scene of the Russian presence in the separatist Trans-Dniester region in Moldova, and the Russian military presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia after Moscow recognized their separation from Georgia, we find that Moscow has become the largest influence in the Black Sea, which raises Turkish fears of proposing Moscow will receive demands relating to the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, which directly threaten the city of Istanbul, the ancient capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and the stronghold of Orthodoxy in the East.
These developments come in conjunction with the increasing importance of the Black Sea in the Turkish strategy after the discovery of huge gas reserves amounting to 540 billion cubic meters. Ankara hopes that these reserves will reduce the annual gas import bill, which is likely to reach 55 billion dollars, according to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. Fatih Donmez (9).
Second: Threatening Turkish/Ukrainian Military Cooperation
After Turkey was subjected to a Western arms embargo following the Turkish army’s entry into Cyprus in 1974, as well as the strict restrictions that accompany US arms sales to Ankara, the latter turned a few decades ago to develop the defense industry sector to meet local military needs and get rid of import restrictions that Turkey mortgages to the policies of exporting countries and makes them Unable to draw independent policies and incapable of interfering in regionally important files, as well as striving to achieve economic returns through arms exports, the effects of which began to appear in the rise in Turkish arms exports from 248 million dollars in 2002 to nearly 3 billion dollars, in In 2019, Ankara also hopes to achieve exports worth 10.2 billion dollars, in 2023 (10).
The distinguished performance of Turkish drones in military operations in Libya in 2020, where they thwarted the attack of Haftar’s forces on the capital, Tripoli, and then played a pivotal role in Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenia in the battles of the Karabakh region, in 2021, as well as its deadly role in directing strikes Influential Syrian regime army following the killing of dozens of Turkish soldiers in Syria, 2020. The mentioned Turkish successes have been achieved against parties allied to Moscow.
Hence, many countries, such as Ukraine, Ethiopia, Morocco and Tunisia, bought Turkish rallies in light of their effective performance, cheap prices and fast delivery.
In January 2019, Ukraine contracted to purchase 6 Bayraktar-TP2 drones and received them in the same year (11) and used them, in October 2021, for the first time against the separatists in the east of the country.
Bloomberg Agency reported, by December 2021, that Ukraine will purchase 20 new Turkish drones in conjunction with the signing of a cooperation agreement in the development of unmanned aircraft between the Turkish company “Baykar” and the Ukrainian “Ivchenko Prograss” company, allowing the supply of Turkish aircraft and locally manufactured cruise missiles. There are Ukrainian engines in Turkey, which will benefit Ankara in getting rid of American restrictions on selling the engines required to develop Turkish weapons (12).
Then the Turkish/Ukrainian military cooperation reached its climax with the two countries signing an agreement to manufacture Turkish drones in Ukraine during Erdogan’s visit to Kyiv, on February 3, 2022.
Turkish drone "Bayraktar TB2"
Turkish/Ukrainian military cooperation provoked Moscow, with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov asking his Turkish counterpart to take Moscow’s concerns about Turkey’s militarization of Ukraine “as seriously as possible,” to which the Turkish foreign minister responded, “Turkey cannot be held responsible for Ukraine’s deployment of Turkish drones.” Made (13).
Consequently, Ukraine has turned into a new arena of duel between the Russian and Turkish weapons, and the defeat of Ukraine, if it occurs, will affect the course of its military cooperation with Turkey, which Ankara needs in terms of technical and economic aspects.
Third: the negative economic repercussions
In light of the negative repercussions of Corona on the Turkish economy, which was manifested in the wave of inflation that approached 48%, in 2021, in conjunction with the deterioration of the value of the Turkish operation, Ankara had hopes that, by relying on the recovery of tourism, the promotion of exports and the decline in oil prices, it would be able to overcome Its economic crisis has reduced its foreign trade deficit of $47 billion, but the war in Ukraine threatens the opposite.
According to the reports of the Turkish Statistical Authority for the year 2021, Russia occupies the second place after China in the list of the largest exporters to Turkey, while Ukraine occupies the eleventh place (14).
Turkey relies mainly on Russia to provide energy supplies, as it imported during 2021 43% of gas imports from Moscow, equivalent to 24 of the 60 billion cubic meters imported by Turkey (15).
Therefore, the rise in the price of gas in conjunction with the price of Brent barrel exceeding the $100 barrier as a result of the war will negatively affect the Turkish economy.
As for the tourism sector, which brought Turkey in 2021 about $24.5 billion, it will also be affected in light of the fact that Russian tourists topped the list of the most visited foreign tourists to Turkey, with 4.694 million tourists, while tourists from Ukraine came in third place with a rate of 2.060 million tourists (16).
Thus, the sanctions imposed on Russia and the decline in the financial capacity of Russians and Ukrainians will negatively affect the Turkish tourism sector.
The repercussions of the Turkish position
Despite Turkey’s firm condemnation of the Russian invasion, Moscow is holding onto many disturbing files for Ankara, from the file of gas supplies and tourism to the Idlib file and support for Kurdish separatist groups. Hostilities, and it is unlikely that Turkey will engage in imposing sanctions on Russia or severing ties with it, because this will cause severe damage to the Turkish economy.
On the other hand, this crisis is likely to contribute to strengthening Turkish-Western relations in light of Turkey's strong condemnation of the Russian invasion, and Ankara's ability to use its strategic location in the Black Sea to prevent the passage of Russian warships through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, and Turkey can also benefit from the repercussions of increasing Western pressure. Russia should have an impact on the level of Moscow’s presence in the two files, the Syrian and the Libyan.
The West can attract Turkey more to its side if it presents temptations to it in some files, such as the Kurdish file, the file of joining the European Union, the file of strengthening military cooperation and joint defense industries, and the file of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Turkish interests lie in curbing Russian expansionist tendencies, preserving the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and stopping the war as soon as possible to avoid the devastating economic repercussions. But if the conflict expands and spreads to other European countries, then Turkey will be forced to abandon the role of mediation to fulfill its obligations towards NATO.