Türkiye, Russia, and their Rules-Based Competition
At its summit in Madrid in June 2022, NATO adopted a new Strategic Concept, identifying Russia as “the greatest and most immediate threat to the security of the Allies and to peace and stability in the Euro‑Atlantic area.” All NATO member states agreed to this, including Türkiye. Yet Ankara is still keen to maintain dialogue with Moscow, while at the same time continuing to obstruct NATO’s northern expansion—despite the West’s need to demonstrate a consolidated front against Russia. This has earned Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the title of “double agent” or even “Trojan horse” in the Western media. Even before the outbreak of Russia’s war in Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Erdogan’s close relationship with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin were a source of irritation for the West. The most notable result of their friendship is Erdogan’s purchase of Russia’s S‑400 anti‑aircraft missile system in 2017, which raised doubts in the West about Ankara’s loyalty to NATO and led to Türkiye’s exclusion from the co‑production of F‑35 fighter jets with Ankara’s Western allies.
Neither the Kremlin nor the Western capitals concealed their respective (and opposed) preferences for the presidential candidates in Türkiye’s elections in May 2023. Erdogan is a foreign leader whom Putin praises most. Working with Erdogan, as Putin once mentioned during a Valdai Discussion Club meeting in October 2020, is “not only pleasant but also safe.” During the inauguration of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, built by Rosatom, on 27 April 2023, Putin highlighted the personal engagement of Erdogan that made the realization of this “flagship project” between Russia and Türkiye possible. Putin’s appreciation of the Turkish president is not limited to words, as the Erdogan government expects the p o s t p o n e m e n t of gas payments to Gazprom— amounting to $20 billion—to 2024 and a 25 percent discount on the gas price.
During the Cold War, the Soviet‑Türkiye bilateral relationship coexisted with Türkiye’s NATO membership
The West’s hope, on the other hand, wasthat with opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu coming to power in Ankara, the era of personal chemistry between Erdogan and Putin would come to its end and that Türkiye would revert to being a disciplined NATO member state, as it was during the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. After all, the widespread perception of Russian‑Turkish relations is that this partnership is underpinned by the personal relations between their respective presidents as well as their anti‑Westernism.
But this assumption was and remains misleading. Not least because it does not explain why the leadership diplomacy between Putin and Erdogan did not help to defuse the crisis in Syria in 2015, when the Turkish air force shot down a Russian fighter jet. The fighter jet crisis of 2015 also shows that the anti‑Westernism of Türkiye’s and Russia’s leadership is not the bond that holds this relationship together. Both countries’ relations with the West were already in tatters at the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2015. Russia’s relations had been fraught since 2014 because of the Crimean annexation and Türkiye’s had worsened as a result both of its policy in the Middle East and domestic developments in Ankara. The alienation of the two countries from the West did not, however, automatically lead to the closeness in Russian‑Turkish relations that we can observe today.
The Russia‑Türkiye partnership is based on specific rules that guide Ankara and Moscow in their dealings with each other that go beyond their leadership diplomacy.
As convenient as it may be in some circles to view Ankara‑Moscow relations in terms of personal chemistry, the fighter jet crisis of 2015 and the subsequent normalization between Russia and Türkiye illustrate that this partnership is based on specific rules that guide Ankara and Moscow in their dealings with each other that go beyond their leadership diplomacy.
Futile Search for a Default Mode
One of the peculiarities of Russia‑Türkiye relations is that this partnership is still very much haunted by the historical legacy. This is especially true of how the relationship is viewed from the outside. A basic assumption is that historical adversaries—particularly these two historical adversaries— cannot be friends; at best, their ties can be considered as one befitting “frenemies.”
Thus, for many analysts of RussiaTürkiye relations, the long history of wars between the Ottoman and Russian empires, coupled with the Cold War rivalry between the Soviet Union and the West, make the current cooperation between Moscow and Ankara seem surprising and paradoxical and, by implication, unsustainable in the long term. In this view, it is the conflictual interaction between Russia and Türkiye that guides the understanding, where conflict is assumed to be the norm, while cooperation must necessarily be the exception.
Yet, periods of cooperation between Russia and Türkiye are not few to be considered an exception. Noteworthy is the fact that after the collapse of the Ottoman and Russian empires, the two did not fight a war with each other. On the contrary, the period of 1920s under Atatürk and Lenin has entered Türkiye’s historiography as the manifestation of a “sincere friendship” between the two young states. The establishment of diplomatic relations between Soviet Russia and the government of the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye dates back to June 1920. Soviet Russia was the first country to recognize the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, “at a time,” as Atatürk said, “no one else had done”. In their Friendship and Fraternity Treaty of March 1921, also known as the Treaty of Moscow, Soviet Russia and the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye affirmed their “solidarity in the struggle against I m p e r i a l i s m ” while laying the basis for the future boundaries of Türkiye’s east and of the South Caucasus republics, completed by the Treaty of Kars in October 1921. The Soviet Union’s support for Atatürk would prove crucial in the Turkish War of Independence (1919‑1923). Moscow supplied ammunition and put up enough gold reserves to cover Ankara’s budget for an entire year. In addition, the Soviet Union helped in the industrialization of Kemalist Türkiye, drawing up a development plan and constructing textile factories in Türkiye.
During the Cold War, the Soviet‑Türkiye bilateral relationship coexisted with Türkiye’s NATO membership.
The Soviet‑Turkish friendship of the 1920s was based on the premise that the age‑old rivalry was entirely the result of the imperial ambitions of the Russian tsars and the Ottoman sultans. Yet the issue of the Straits remained the main bone of contention in Soviet‑Turkish relations. During the negotiations on the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, Moscow’s proposals on the demilitarization of the Straits were actually more favorable to Ankara than those of the Turkish delegation.
However, Türkiye’s successful revision of the Straits regime in Montreux in 1936, when Ankara secured its sovereignty over the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, left the Soviet leadership unhappy. As Stalin is reported to have lamented to U.S. President Harry Truman in 1945, the Montreux Convention meant that “a small state [i.e., Türkiye] supported by Great Britain held a great state [i.e., the USSR] by the throat and gave it no outlet.”
Stalin’s revisionist demands towards Ankara in 1945 concerning Türkiye’s territorial integrity and its control of Straits eventually led Ankara to seek support from the West, culminating in Türkiye’s NATO membership in 1952. Nowadays, both Russia and Türkiye see the Montreux Convention as a crucial instrument that keeps Western actors at bay in the Black Sea. Russia’s envy of Türkiye’s control of access to and from the Black Sea is limited to naming preferences, as the Turkish Straits are still often referred to as the Black Sea Straits in the Russian expert community.
Despite of the Turkish government’s strategic decision to side with the West during the Cold War, Soviet‑Turkish relations were not completely broken off. In 1953, Türkiye was the only country from the non‑Soviet bloc to send an official representative to Stalin’s funeral and the Soviet Union supported Türkiye into the 1970s by building factories: a steel works, an aluminium factory, an oil refinery, and so on.
Nearly forgotten is the fact that Russian‑Turkish energy relations also have their roots in the Cold War era. In 1984, Türkiye and the Soviet Union signed their first agreement on gas imports to Türkiye, for which Ankara paid in agricultural goods and a range of services, mainly in the construction industry.
For many observers of Russia‑Türkiye relations, one of the partnership’s key puzzles is that, despite the lack of trust, the two sides still cooperate. But this is only puzzling if we assume that trust is necessary for cooperation.
A brief review of Russia‑Türkiye ties suggests that it is a dynamic relationship without a fixed default mode. During the Cold War, the Soviet‑Türkiye bilateral relationship coexisted with Türkiye’s NATO membership. In the post‑Cold War period, their ties have expanded to include not only tourism and trade, but also extensive energy relations and cooperation in the domain of nuclear energy. However, it is above all their joint regional conflict management in the Middle East, the South Caucasus, and the Black Sea theater that deserves particular attention. Especially the crisis over Syria in 2015 provides insights into how Russia and Türkiye have learned to manage their relations in a mutually beneficial way.
Trust vs. Predictability
For many observers of Russia‑Türkiye relations, one of the partnership’s key puzzles is that, despite the lack of trust, the two sides still cooperate. But this is only puzzling if we assume that trust is necessary for cooperation. The Ankara‑Moscow relationship shows that this does not have to be the case. Instead, this partnership has evolved based on mutual familiarity: each actor has become predictable to the other. As Putin elaborated during the annual news conference on 17 December 2020, despite
different, occasionally opposing views on certain matters, [Erdogan] keeps his word like a real man. He does not wag his tail. If he thinks something is good for his country, he goes for it. This is about predictability. It is important to know whom you are dealing with. This lesson may have been learned in 2015 in the context of the Syria civil war, when Erdogan was not that predictable to his Russian counterpart.
On 24 November 2015 in the Turkish‑Syrian border region, the Turkish air force shot down a Russian fighter jet which had violated Turkish airspace for 17 seconds. Two Russian pilots were killed in the incident and the subsequent evacuation operation.
Russia responded with economic sanctions on the import of certain Turkish products, the suspension of visa exemption for Turkish citizens, and a ban on Russia‑based tour operators to organize charter holiday packages to Türkiye. These hit the Turkish economy hard. Furthermore, as Putin announced that Türkiye was “not going to get away with tomato bans,” in February 2016, a representative office for Kurds from Syria was opened in Moscow.
From the Kremlin’s point of view, it was Türkiye’s failed crisis management and lack of communication that led to Russia’s severe response to the shooting down of the fighter jet. During his annual news conference on 17 December 2015, Putin mentioned several issues that pointed to mismatched expectations. First, an important reason for Moscow’s reaction was Erdogan’s decision to turn to NATO rather than directly to Putin “to straighten things out” after the incident. This was unexpected for Putin, especially given that Moscow had allegedly been willing to cooperate with Ankara on “the issues that [were] sensitive to Türkiye,” even though they did “not fit into the context of international law.” Second, the Russian side was not aware of Türkiye’s important ties with the Turkomans in Syria. As Putin a c k n o w l e dg e d , “I knew that Turkmen—our Turkmen—lived in Turkmenistan, and so I was confused […]. Nobody told us about them.”
The Russian‑Turkish partnership was tested again in late February 2020 during a military escalation in Syria’s Idlib province. As a result of Russian‑backed air strikes, at least thirty‑four Turkish soldiers were killed. This time, unlike in 2015, Erdogan predictably went to Moscow on 5 March 2020 to reach a ceasefire deal with Putin.
Problem‑Solving Partnership
Various media outlets and observers of Russian‑Turkish relations based in the West and in the two countries themselves focused on the symbolic aspects of the meeting between Putin and Erdogan on 5 March 2020. Seemingly in line with the expectation of a conflictual relation as a default mode influenced by the historical legacy, Turkish and Russian analysts alike did not fail to notice the décor in the rooms of the Kremlin, such as the statue of Catherine the Great under whose rule Russia annexed Crimea from the Ottoman Empire in 1783 and defeated this state in two wars, as well as a sculpture of Russian soldiers who successfully fought against the Ottomans in Bulgaria in 1878.
It is in the context of Syria that Ankara and Moscow have learned to help each other solve their problems in not only a mutually‑acceptable but also in a mutually‑beneficial way, exporting their problem‑solving scheme to other conflict areas while expanding bilateral cooperation.
It was indeed surprising to many that Putin and Erdogan agreed to a ceasefire in Syria’s Idlib in March 2020. After all, as is often noted in analyses of contemporary Russian‑Turkish relations, Ankara and Moscow do not see eye to eye on any of the conflicts in their neighborhood and are said to be on opposing sides not only in the Middle East but also in the South Caucasus, not to mention in the war in Ukraine.
But the March 2020 agreement d e m o n s t r a t e d that it is not any one crisis per se, but the particular manner in which a crisis is managed that is a crucial element in understanding the dynamics of Russian‑Turkish relations. As Putin noted at the press conference following the meeting, “at crucial moments, thanks to the high level of our bilateral relations, we have so far always managed to find common ground in disputed issues and to come up with acceptable solutions.”
Between the fighter jet crisis of 2015 and the Idlib escalation of 2020, we can indeed observe a reciprocal effect between the bilateral relationship and not only the ability but also the willingness from both sides to address regional challenges. Instead of being an endurance test for the Russian‑Turkish partnership, the Syrian conflict has become the glue that holds it together. It is in the context of Syria that Ankara and Moscow have learned to help each other solve their problems in not only a mutually‑acceptable but also in a mutually‑beneficial way, exporting their problem‑solving scheme to other conflict areas while expanding bilateral cooperation.
Recognizing the necessity to cooperate has been key to Russia and Türkiye building their close partnership. This is particularly important from a Turkish perspective. Türkiye’s economic dependence on Russia is often cited as a vital factor for Ankara to maintain its relationship with Moscow. This line of reasoning can be found in Türkiye’s positioning in the conflict over Ukraine and its refusal to both fully and formally join the West‑led sanctions and export restrictions regime against Russia. It was also the lesson that Ankara learned after the fighter jet crisis in 2015—namely, that severing ties with Moscow comes at too high an economic cost. Thus, although opposition parties in Türkiye criticize their country’s economic dependence on Russia, they too see a functioning relationship with Moscow as important. After all, it is “not by choice, but out of necessity,” as a prominent opposition figure in Türkiye once put it in an informal conversion.
It was indeed the Turkish side that took the initiative to normalize relations with Russia in June 2016. This turnaround was due in part to the situation in Syria; Türkiye wanted to crack down not only on the IS, but also on the YPG/PYD, which Türkiye regards as affiliated with the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PKK). The economic situation was also an important deciding factor. The Russian sanctions mainly affected tourism, the construction industry, and the retail sector. As later disclosed by the then advisor of the Turkish president, Ibrahim Kalin, the reconciliation that Erdogan had been seeking with Putin since April 2016 was led by Turkish entrepreneur Cavit Caglar, the then chief of Turkish General Staff Hulusi Akar, and Nursultan Nazarbayev, the then president of Kazakhstan.
Another factor that helped forge an agreement between Putin and Erdogan was undoubtedly Putin’s support of Erdogan after the attempted coup in Türkiye on 15 July 2016—especially compared with the tepid responses of Ankara’s Western partners. Erdogan’s first foreign trip after the coup attempt was to Russia. After a meeting with Putin in Saint Petersburg on 9 August 2016, relations between Türkiye and Russia began to develop exponentially, both bilaterally and in Syria.
Partnership with Ankara allowed Russia, for example, to implement the TurkStream gas pipeline—a replacement for Gazprom’s South Stream project, which had been cancelled in part due to tensions with the EU following the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The resumption of dialogue with Russia in turn enabled Türkiye to launch fresh military operations in Syria. With Russia’s help, Türkiye was able to counter the project of expanded Kurdish‑led autonomy in Syria, which had become Ankara’s main security concern. But Russia also took advantage of the revived partnership, working with Türkiye in 2016 to establish the Astana process for Syria, which only gained legitimacy because of Türkiye’s ties to Syrian opposition forces. Militarytechnical cooperation was also to be expanded – with the aim, as Putin put it at the meeting of the 23rd World Energy Congress in Istanbul on 10 October 2016, of “continuing this interaction and filling it with serious projects of mutual interest”. In November 2016 there were first media reports that Ankara was interested in buying the Russian missile defense system S‑400, with the purchase deal worth $2.5 billion finally unveiled in December 2017.
Like in Syria, Moscow and Ankara were also on opposite sides of the conflict over Karabakh that culminated in the Second Karabakh War in autumn 2020, although not in the zero‑sum way in which some analysts reported at the time. Yes, Türkiye’s support for Azerbaijan was virtually unconditional; Russia’s support for Armenia was more nuanced (a reflection of Russia’s complex relations with Azerbaijan)—although allies through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Moscow stayed out of the hostilities because, as Putin repeatedly stressed, the Second Karabakh War was not fought on the territory of Armenia. Of course, the suboptimal state of Russian relations with the Armenian government under Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018 as a result of protests, also played a role in Moscow’s restraint. From Russia’s perspective, this “regime change” was the result of a “color revolution” aimed at undermining Russia’s influence in that country.
The outcome of the Second Karabakh War brought benefits to Moscow and Ankara alike. By consenting to share its sphere of influence with Türkiye, Russia was able to station its troops (in the form of “peacekeepers”) in a part of Karabakh for the first time. At the start of the war, the statement of 30 September 2020 by Türkiye’s then foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu that Baku can count on Ankara’s full support “on the field and at the negotiating table” indicates that Türkiye was also seeking a political role in settling the conflict. Indeed, the Turkish side also made proposals to Moscow to replicate the partnership scheme the two had achieved in Syria. Ankara’s aim of transferring Astana‑like arrangement to the South Caucasus was not achieved. Nevertheless, Ankara reaped the benefits of the war’s outcome, including the commitment by Yerevan to establish what both Ankara and Baku now call the “Zangezur Corridor”—a land connection between Türkiye and Azerbaijan via the latter’s exclave of Nakhchivan traversing a sliver of Armenian territory. Once operational, this route will provide Türkiye with direct access to the Silk Road region without having to traverse either Georgia or Iran, as is presently the case.
The war in Ukraine is another example of Russian‑Turkish cooperation in conflict management. The relocation of the Russian and Ukrainian negotiating delegations from Belarus to Türkiye in March 2022 could be seen as a concession by Putin to Erdogan to raise Türkiye’s international profile, not to mention Ankara’s diplomatic clout.
Maintaining dialogue with Moscow was also necessary for Türkiye to play a leading role in the Black Sea Grain Initiative, starting in July 2022. Despite complaints from Moscow that Russia’s part of the deal is not being implemented, it has agreed to extend the initiative several times, presumably in the expectation of a quid pro quo from Ankara. This mainly concerns the economic sphere, such as finding ways to heighten parallel trade possibilities and for Ankara’s position on secondary sanctions to demonstrate a reasonable amount of flexibility.
Manageable Interference
Under Putin and Erdogan, Russian‑Turkish relations are no longer merely about “tourists and tomatoes.” In addition to military procurement and heightened energy ties, including in the nuclear sphere, they are underpinned by a complex set of conflict management arrangement in the neighborhoods they share. Ankara‑Moscow relations are also not confined to telephone calls and meetings between the two leaders. In Syria, Russia and Türkiye carry out joint military patrols. In Azerbaijan, the two have established a joint center for monitoring the Moscow‑brokered ceasefire that ended the Second Karabakh War.
The Turkish side tends to explain its partnership with Russia not in terms of cooperation but in geopolitical terms: Ankara’s narrative emphasizes the importance of containing Russia in the Middle East, the South Caucasus, and the Black Sea. Ankara furthermore stresses that its vital contribution in this regard is not recognized, let alone appreciated, by its allies in NATO (much less by the European Union). For Russia, too, Türkiye is first and foremost a NATO member state. Türkiye’s balancing acts with an overall Western orientation, of which Putin was reminded during the fighter jet crisis in 2015, have been an integral part of Türkiye’s policy towards Russia as well as of its entire foreign policy.
Why is it, then, that Russia appears to be exercising strategic patience with Türkiye’s growing presence in what Moscow sees as its zone of privileged interests? The short answer is that, in the Kremlin’s view, Türkiye, unlike other NATO member states, does not seek to interfere beyond its sphere of influence, which means that Türkiye’s policies in Russia’s immediate neighborhood do not adversely affect Russia’s own security. This makes Türkiye, in the Kremlin’s view, an acceptable actor with which Russia is willing to share its neighborhood. We can call this Russian interpretation of Türkiye’s posture “manageable interference.”
Such conduct was not always the case, however. Russian‑Turkish relations were severely strained in the mid‑1990s by separatist movements and mutual accusations of aiding and abetting these movements. The Russian side was outraged when Türkiye supported secessionist forces in Chechnya, mainly with weapons and soldiers. Türkiye, meanwhile, was afraid that Russia would play the “Kurdish card” against Ankara. When, for example, Moscow was preparing to host the International Congress of Kurdish Organizations in 1996, Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK, which Türkiye designates a terrorist organization, spoke clearly of his hopes of Russian backing: “Just as Russia aided the creation of the Turkish state, let it now give the same support to the creation of an independent Kurdish state.” Eventually, Russia and Türkiye agreed to treat Chechnya and the Kurdish question as each other’s home affairs. As the then Russian ambassador in Ankara, Albert Chernyshev, put it: “Russia and Türkiye are in the same boat. If the boat sinks, we both sink. It is necessary that we find the means for both of us to stay on the surface.” The means that Russia and Türkiye found to reconcile their differences, aided in part by a 1997 agreement on the prospect to develop a natural gas pipeline they called Blue Stream.
Already in the 1990s, several rules began to govern Russia‑Türkiye relations, many of which bear a striking similarity to those that characterize the present bilateral partnership. First, it is a dynamic relationship influenced by current security priorities rather than shaped by the default mode of their conflictual historical legacy. Second, this relationship is based on properly understanding each other’s interests, which makes the other side predictable. Third, an important feature that goes beyond understanding, but also involves addressing each other’s interests, is the future prospect of mutually‑beneficial cooperation. This last is a good example of what Robert Axelrod referred to in his 1984 book The Evolution of Cooperation as “the shadow of the future,” which allows for a collaboration for which trust is not a necessary requirement. More important are the repeated interactions and the mutual rewards hoped for from future cooperation.
The Russia‑Türkiye relationship is often dismissed as purely transactional, but in fact it is precisely this transactional aspect that must be taken seriously: the transactional dynamics of the partnership—defined here as an interest‑based negotiation process aimed at mutually‑acceptable (at a minimum) and mutually‑beneficial problem‑solving—allow Russia and Türkiye not only to upgrade their bilateral relations, but to enter into regional conflict management that is unparalleled in the history of the countries’ relationship. The more interdependent the relationship becomes, the more costly its break‑up will be. In other words, if the balance is upset in one of these areas, it may well spill over into others. Finally, all three rules outlined above work only if Russia and Türkiye do not seek to interfere beyond the sphere that touches upon their own respective security interests.
It would be difficult indeed to make a persuasive case that it is in the interest of any other geopolitically‑relevant actor to conduct itself in a manner that would cause a rupture of the rules‑based competition that provides what has now become a solid framework for the perpetuation of the Russian‑Turkish relationship.
