Turkey and Russia: geopolitical balance and anti-Western stancce

The pace and depth of events in the Turkey-Russia relations since 2016 have been interesting. Discontent with the West has been a major factor in rapidly improving ties. In fact, it was arguably anti-Westernism that created Turkey's policy of geopolitical balance between Russia and the West, along with the interpretation that a multipolar global order was in the making. The close relationship with Russia has caused new rifts between Turkey  and the West. However, despite their shared discontent with the West, Russian and Turkish anti-Westerni stance differ in their nature, origin and manifestation.

 

Turkish anti-Westernism tends to be selective and policy-focused, while the Russian version is more structural and all-encompassing. For example, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that the central objective of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was to end American and Western dominance in the international system. Unlike Russia, Turkey benefits from the Western-centric international system that it criticizes. These differences have important political consequences. The invasion of Ukraine has also introduced a number of new dynamics to the Turkey-Russia-West triangle. Ankara's policy of geopolitical balance is entering difficult, if not unfeasible terrain, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the West explicitly treat Russia as an enemy. The cost of such a policy is likely to increase. But even if the balance were to become unworkable, Ankara would strive to maintain some form of functional bilateral relationship with Moscow.

 

Geopolitical balance policy and functional bilateral relations

 

The main difference between Turkey's policy of geopolitical balance and the goal of maintaining functional bilateral relations with Russia is the scope of cooperation. Establishing a functional bilateral relationship meant cultivating economic, energy and political ties, but it did not extend to the strategic fields of geopolitical cooperation and the defense industry. The geopolitical balance, for its part, involves strategic cooperation, acquisition of military material (purchase of the Russian air defense system s-400) and geopolitical engagement in conflictive areas in Syria, Libya and Nagorno Karabagh. The balancing policy is driven by discontent with the West and is based on a particular reading of global politics, which Ankara sees as increasingly multipolar and less Western (if not post-Western) centric. Also contributing was the fact that Ankara considers that the West lacks internal cohesion, given certain signs of fragmentation between Europe and the United States (especially during the presidency of Donald Trump) and within Europe after Brexit. On the contrary, even Turkey's most pro-Western leaders, such as Süleyman Demirel and Turgut Özal, have sought to maintain and improve functional bilateral relations with Russia. Throughout Turkey's modern history, Ankara has repeatedly sought Moscow's help in developing its heavy industry, for example in the case of the Iskenderun steel plant.

 

Functional bilateral relations with Moscow and the geopolitical balance between Russia and the West are not mutually exclusive, but they certainly differ. The pursuit of functional bilateral relations puts the functioning Turkish government in line with much of Turkey's political history, while its current policy of geopolitical balance constitutes an experiment in breaking with tradition. The Ottoman and Russian empires fought 13 wars, making the Ottoman and Turkish elites acutely aware of Russia's geopolitical ambitions and power projection. As a result, these elites have always sought alliances with Western powers to counter them.

 

The era around 1919, to the mid-1930s is the only period in which Turkey sought a comparable geopolitical or strategic balance between Russia/Soviet and the West. The Bolsheviks gave significant financial aid during those troiblesome times for Turkey, and, later, to the young republic. In 1921, the USSR returned to Turkey three eastern provinces that had come under the control of the Russian Empire in 1878. A friendship and neutrality treaty was signed in 1925, from which the USSR unilaterally withdrew in 1945. Anti-imperialism discourses and politics shaped the general framework of the relationship during this period. The young Republic of Turkey, as a post-imperial state that had recently waged a war of independence against the European imperial powers, was well aware of the latter's geopolitical ambitions and their propensity to interfere in the internal affairs of weaker states. This early policy of balance lasted more or less until the preparations for the Montreux Convention of 1936, which gave Turkey control of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits.

 

No Turkish government before that of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had established such deep strategic, military and geopolitical relations with Moscow. However, it is necessary to distinguish nuances. Both moments (Atatürk/Lenin and Erdoğan/Putin) are similar, in part, in the sense that they contain a high degree of functional bilateral relations, as well as a policy of geopolitical balance. However, they also differ in important ways. NATO did not exist before World War II; Ankara joined the Atlantic Alliance in 1952, anchoring Turkey in the Western security structure. In addition, leaving aside the USSR , during the first experience of rapprochement there were no other important alternative power centers (to the West). Now, instead, there are multiple centers of power in world politics: the West, Russia and China, to name the main ones. In addition, regional powers are increasingly relevant.