As Mr.Medvedev indicated the concrete Turkish-Russian relations with the multidimensional agreements are the signs of “a strategic partnership not on paper but a real one”. They laid the foundations of a strategic alliance, which could determine the destiny of Turkey, Russia, and the Eurasia & Middle East region, and which prevent the policies on using military force by the Western powers such as the USA (and Israel) and the European Union in the international arena in order to overcome Iran crisis.

Considering the improvement rates and dimensions of the Turkish-Russian relations, it is indeed realized that the two countries left hostility and insecurity both in the social leadership and business arena and between the two nations, behind. Moscow-Ankara relations tried to be established by Mr.Özal did not go beyond the shuttle trade and gas collaboration such as the blue stream in the 1990s. In the 1990s, while Turkey was fighting against the PKK and governed by a politically weak administration, Russia, during the Yeltsin Era, was trying to suppress the Chechen rebellion and to deal with the problems on their way to capitalism. Thus, there was no political conjuncture to develop the relations between the two countries. When Mr. Putin came to power in Russia in 2000 and the Justice and Development Party (AK), under the leadership of Mr. Erdoğan, came to power in Turkey in 2002, these factors set the scene to improve the relations between the two. Marked by the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush Era in the USA helped these relations improve more with its policies on unilateral use of military force and the circumstances during the economic crisis that we are in.

Unlike Mr. Yeltsin, who was regarded as the representative of the pro-Western Russian elites, Mr. Putin came to power as the Eurasian representative in Russia. During his first term (2000-2004), Mr. Putin adopted a strategy to gain the prestige lost against the USA and the Western states and to gather Russia’s strength again. He showed a challenging attitude towards the USA and the Western states in his speech at Munich Security Conference in 2007 and he displayed the same challenging attitude militarily during the occupation of Georgia in 2008. The financial crisis and the economic depression started in the USA and the EU, the core powers of the capitalist world, enabled Russia to strengthen its geopolitical gains in the region and to form the cyclical and political basis of the strategic partnerships with the rising powers outside the Western world. That the first summit meeting of the BRIC countries was held in Yekaterinburg (Russia) in 2009 is important and meaningful in that sense. For now Turkey, as a member of the NATO, which is the central organization of the Western alliance, with the expectations of the EU membership, is not able to be the fifth state in the BRIC. However, Turkey has relatively more contacts with the BRIC countries, which is a new international formation. As a matter of fact, Mr. Davutoğlu- the Minister of Foreign Affairs- went to Brazil during the last summit meeting of the BRIC countries in Brazil. And Russia attaches importance to Turkey’s cooperation with and support for this kind of organizations.

Turkey’s attitudes to provide regional peace and stability with the multidimensional foreign policy and economic integration played extremely important role in the improvement of Turkish-Russian relations. In this context, the agreement between the powerful leaders of the both countries, Mr. Putin and Mr. Erdoğan, in terms of leadership should not be ignored. It would not be possible to improve the relations such quickly without the powerful leaders, who could trust each other even in the most critical situations. With its distant attitudes towards the USA before the Iraq War and refusal to support the war in Iraq, its economic and political relations with the Muslim world and African states, and its adamant attitudes towards the Gaza incident and Iran crisis, Turkey became an important actor in the region and it is observed by Russia with a great interest. Mr. Medvedev visited Damascus before Ankara and it is very likely that Mr. Medvedev was influenced by what Bashar al-Assad, who visited Turkey recently, said about Turkey. Besides, Moscow and Ankara have very similar perspectives on approaching a good number of problems. Therefore, Mr. Medvedev’s one-day visit to Turkey should be considered as a milestone in a period in which two regional powers have started to understand each other more by disburdening their minds of what happened in history.

As a conclusion, Turkey and Russia, as the rising powers in their regions, drew a socioeconomic frame for the increase of cooperation in every sense against the Western states’ weakening power and their international efficiency in the new era. The political reflections of these relations based on mutual trust will be seen in the near future in myriad areas from the solution of Nagorno- Karabakh problem to the Palestine- Israel problem and Iran crisis. And Washington and Brussels should consider this increasing strategic axis as a natural seek for cooperation required by the internationalism rather than a threat.


Prof. Dr. Birol Akgün
SDE Specialist