The Crisis in Russian–Turkish Relations, 2008–2015

This article recently appeared in Russian Analytical Digest No. 179, which is a series published by the Center for Security Studies (CSS).

Abstract

On November 24, 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber aircraft that violated Turkish airspace. This has been interpreted as the primary cause of the spectacular crisis in Russian–Turkish relations that followed. However, this incident should rather be interpreted as the symptom, not the cause, of a significant geopolitical reversal that has been underway since 2008, as Russia and Turkey have found themselves on opposite sides in military conflicts in Georgia (2008), Ukraine (2014), and Syria (2015).

November 24, 2015: Symptom, not the Cause, of a Geopolitical Reversal

During Russian President Putin’s visit to Turkey on December 1, 2014, which was set against the back- ground of Western sanctions against Russia that Turkey did not participate in, some thought that there was a Russian–Turkish “alliance” in the making. Thus, the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 bomber aircraft that violated Turkish airspace on November 24, 2015, came as a shock and was interpreted as the primary cause of the most spectacular crisis in Russian–Turkish relations in the 21st century. However, the shooting down of the Russian bomber aircraft was not the cause, but rather the symptom, of a tectonic reversal in the geopolitical dynamics underlying prior cooperation between the two countries.

The most remarkable feature of the crisis between Russia and Turkey is that they continued to maintain their strong economic relations, including approximately 30 billion USD in annual trade between 2011 and 2014, agreement on the building of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant by Russia in 2008, and between three and four million Russian tourists visiting Turkey every year. However, despite developing strong economic ties, Russia and Turkey have continued to have significant and very consequential geopolitical conflicts of interest over Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria, the latter turning into an escalating proxy war following Russia’s massive military intervention in Syria, which began on September 1, 2015.

Prelude to the Rift: “Five Day War” between Russian and Georgia, August 2008

Georgia is the most critical country in Turkey’s strategy in the South Caucasus, and also the only country that geographically lies between Russia and Turkey, akin to a “buffer state” moderating the potential for conflict between the two countries. Moreover, ever since its reemergence as an independent state in 1992, and especially since the “Rose Revolution” of November 2003 which brought to power Mikhail Saakasvili as the president in January 2004, Georgia has been a close ally of the United States, Turkey, and Azerbaijan. Georgia under Saakashvili enthusiastically sought NATO membership, a pursuit that drew it even closer to Turkey, its only NATO member neighbor. The Baku–Tblisi–Ceyhan pipeline, an important objective of Turkish foreign policy that would cement Turkish–Azerbaijani–Georgian common interests and connect Caspian oil to the world markets, was finally completed and the first oil was pumped from Baku in May 2005, reaching the Turkish port of Ceyhan in May 2006. Among other cooperative developments during this period, there was also agreement in principle on building the Kars–Tblisi railroad between Turkey and Georgia, connecting Turkish, Georgian and Azerbaijani railroad networks. Thus, tangible and significant steps were taken to bring Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia closer together.

The major disadvantage for Georgia was that it did not have de facto control over any of its autonomous republics, Abkhazia, Adjara, and South Ossetia, at the time of the Rose Revolution. The Saakashvili government successfully forced the pro-Russian leader of Adjara, Aslan Abashidze, to resign in May 2004, and brought this region under central government control. However, when Georgia attempted to bring South Ossetia under control in August 2008, the Russian military responded massively by defeating the Georgian army in South Ossetia and occupying several towns in Georgia proper. As a result of the “Five Day War”, as this conflict came to be known, Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. The decisive defeat of Georgia in this conflict, Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia’s independence, and the subsequent increased Russian military presence in these regions, all dealt a major blow to the process of Caucasian integration led by Turkey. The Kars–Tblisi railroad has not been built at the time of writing, and a new Prime Minister and then President who prioritized reconciliation with Russia took power in Georgia in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Despite the significant damage to Turkish interests that the Russian victory over Georgia entailed, Turkey did not actively and vocally support Georgia during the war. This may be interpreted as a sign that Turkey did not want to risk its much more important relations with Russia over its intervention in Georgia.

Cooperation despite Conflict: Trade and Nuclear Power Plant Deal, May 2010

Russian–Turkish cooperation continued and even increased in other areas of common interests in the aftermath of the Five Day War. Perhaps the most remarkable example of cooperation, given its economic scale and its strategic and symbolic significance, has been the Russian–Turkish nuclear power plant deal. Russia and Turkey signed an agreement in May 2010, ratified by the Turkish parliament in July 2010, according to which a subsidiary of the Russian state corporation Rosatom would build and operate a nuclear power plant in Akkuyu, by the Turkish Mediterranean coast.

Trade and tourism were two other areas of massive Russian–Turkish interaction. Bilateral trade increased from around 23 billion USD in 2009 to around 33 billion USD in 2012, remaining above 30 billion USD in 2013 and 2014. The number of Russian tourists visiting Turkey gradually increased, surpassing three million in 2010 and four million in 2013.[1] Turkey has been the second biggest customer of Russian natural gas after Germany in Europe, and the number of Russian tourists visiting Turkey has been second only to German tourists. Thus, in both bilateral trade and tourism, Russia and Germany consolidated their status as Turkey’s two major partners.

Beginning of the End? The Arab Spring, December 2010

The string of anti-authoritarian protests and rebellions that began in Tunisia in December 2010 and came to be known as the “Arab Spring” arguably constituted a critical development for the geopolitical dynamics that decisively pitted Turkey and Russia against one another, leading to their eventual clash, most spectacularly over Syria in Fall 2015. However, this interpretation also contains a degree of retrospective bias. First, the three North African countries in which the Arab Spring began, namely, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, are geographically remote from Russia and Turkey, and are not immediately considered as key countries of Russian–Turkish competition. Second, there could have been a mutual accommodation of Russian and Turkish preferences, if the two sides pursued such reconciliation. However, this otherwise plausible counterfactual scenario did not materialize.

As the protests gained momentum, Turkey sided with the revolutionary movements in Egypt and Tunisia, and after a brief hesitation, also in Libya, whereas Russia resolutely sided with the ousted Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the military dictator who ousted the first democratically elected President of Egypt, Mohammad Morsi. While Turkey has been perhaps the most vocal supporter of President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood government in the world, Russia has been one of the most explicit supporters of Sisi’s military dictatorship that followed. Thus, Russian and Turkish preferences became polar opposites even in the North African countries where the Arab Spring began.

The Critical Juncture: Russian Annexation of Crimea, March 2014

While regime change, civil conflict, or military takeover in Egypt, Libya, or Tunisia, did not pose an immediate threat to the national security or territorial integrity of Turkey or Russia, the momentous developments that engulfed Ukraine since November 2013 had direct consequences for both countries individually, as well as for Russian–Turkish relations more specifically. The immediate cause of the mass protests that began at Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, was a geopolitical choice: The Ukrainian government led by President Yanukovych and Prime Minister Azarov suspended preparations for signing the Association Agreement with the European Union in favor of seeking closer ties with Russia.

This critical and evidently pro-Russian decision provoked people who favored a pro-European course for Ukraine. This led to mass protests between November 2013 and February 2014, which combined with his removal from the presidency by the Ukrainian parliament, forced Yanukovych to initially flee to Kharkiv in Eastern Ukraine, and then to Russia. The coming to power of an avowedly pro-Western government in Ukraine, in what Russian policy makers depicted as a “coup” and decried as being illegitimate, was the pretext for Russia’s swift occupation of Crimea in February 2014. This was followed by a dubious referendum held under occupation, which allegedly resulted in a popular endorsement of the peninsula’s annexation by Russia in March 2014.

The annexation of Crimea was a critical juncture for Russian–Turkish relations. Crimea has a central position in the Black Sea, akin to the location of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean. Prior to the annexation of Crimea, Turkey had naval and strategic superiority in the Black Sea. Russia’s annexation of Crimea dramatically changed the strategic balance in the Black Sea, making Russia the emerging hegemonic power with an offensive capability that threatens all the littoral states of the Black Sea, including Turkey. As I argued in my interview with the Turkish–Armenian newspaper, Agos, in March 6, 2014, “with the annexation of Crimea, Russia became the greatest immediate military threat to Turkey” once again, as it was during the Cold War and in the previous two centuries.[2] Crimean Tatars, the indigenous population of the peninsula, have been historically persecuted by the governments in Moscow, and hence vociferously opposed the annexation and boycotted the referendum. While there are a quarter million Tatars remaining in Crimea after centuries of persecution and deportations, there are up to one million descendants of Crimean Tatars in Turkey, including many among the academic, business, and intellectual elites. There have been numerous protests in Turkey against the Russian annexation of Crimea. The reemergence of the Russian military threat with the annexation of Crimea, in part, reversed the geopolitical dynamics that had sustained relative peace and a high level of cooperation between Russia and Turkey since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Increased Cooperation despite Conflict: Turkish Stream, December 2014

Despite seemingly irreconcilable differences between Russia and Turkey over Crimea, economic cooperation continued unabated. Turkey did not participate in the Western embargoes imposed on Russia following the annexation of Crimea, hence benefitting from the rerouting of some Russian goods to Turkey. Meanwhile, construction began at the site of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in April 2015, with plans for the first reactor to be operational in 2020. After years of discussion, during his visit to Turkey on December 1, 2015, Putin announced a plan for a new natural gas pipeline named “Turkish Stream,” which would replace the South Stream project that was canceled following the Western embargoes placed on Russia in relation to Crimea. The announcement of the Turkish Stream project surprised most observers, and fed overblown speculations about an emergent Russian–Turkish axis. Combined with Turkey’s alienation from the Western alliance, some groups such as the Turkish Eurasianists, which have been advocating a Russian–Turkish axis as the new geopolitical orientation for Turkey for many years, became even more vocal.

The Last Straw: Russian Intervention in Syria, September 2015

Turkey, along with the United States and France, has been supporting various opposition groups fighting against the Assad regime in Syria since 2011, mostly grouped together as the “Free Syrian Army”. Also known as the “moderate opposition,” these groups have their stronghold in northwestern Syria, around the cities of Aleppo and Idlib, which are very close to the Turkish border. After the Assad regime’s encirclement of Aleppo failed in February 2014, these opposition forces registered rapid and significant gains, and the Assad regime seemed to be gradually collapsing during the Spring and Summer of 2015.

Baathist Syria had been a pro-Soviet state during the Cold War. Russia’s only military base in the Mediterranean is the naval base in Tartus, Syria, which it inherited from the Soviet Union. Russia has supported Syria diplomatically, most importantly in the UN Security Council, especially shielding the Assad regime from international criticism after its use of chemical weapons in the Gouta attack in August 2013. Nonetheless, Russia’s massive military intervention in Syria that began on September 1, 2015, came as a surprise to many observers. The Russian Air Force began bombing Syrian opposition forces, including Turkmen fighters, many of whom are directly supported by Turkey, and over the course of several months violated Turkish airspace on numerous occasions, with a Russian Su-24 bomber aircraft finally shot down by Turkey on November 24, 2015. This incident should be interpreted as the result of a significant geopolitical reversal that has been underway since 2008, as briefly explained above.

The Next Red Line: Russia’s Military Support for the PKK and the PYD Russian–Turkish relations hit their nadir on November 24, 2015, but I would maintain that the 1990s, the Cold War, and the Tsarist–Ottoman relations were much worse. The key difference is a critical turning point in late 1998, when Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)—which is recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU, and the United States—was forced to leave Syria under Turkish pressure, and fled to Moscow where he sought political asylum. On November 4, 1998, the Russian Duma voted in favor of granting asylum for Öcalan. Despite this Duma decision, the Russian government denied Öcalan’s request and forced him to leave Moscow. This was a critical turning point in Russian–Turkish relations. For decades, Moscow had supported numerous terrorist groups and armed insurgencies against Turkey. By denying Öcalan’s request, Moscow signaled that it would respect Turkey’s territorial integrity by not supporting terrorism or armed insurrection against Turkey. In return, Turkey signaled that it would not support terrorism or armed insurgency against Russia, which was important for Russia given the very strong separatist insurgency in the North Caucasus at the time. Russian support for the PKK or its Syrian affiliate, PYD, is the next red line in the relationship, the crossing of which could lead to a further deterioration in relations to level not seen since before the 1998 status quo took shape.

Further Reading

• Aktürk, Sener. “Toward a Turkish–Russian Axis? Conflicts in Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine, and Cooperation over Nuclear Energy.” Insight Turkey 16, no. 4 (2014): 13–22.

• Aktürk, Şener. “The Fourth Style of Politics: Eurasianism as a Pro-Russian Rethinking of Turkey’s Geopolitical Identity.” Turkish Studies 16, no. 1 (2015): 54–79.

Notes

[1] Habibe Özdal and Kerim Has, “Türkiye Rusya: Derin Ayrışma (mı?)”, Analist 60, February 2016, p.40.

[2] Şener Aktürk, “Kırım’ın işgaliyle, Rusya Türkiye’nin en büyük tehdidi olur”, Agos, 7 March 2014, p.3.