Turkey and Russia: Axis of The Excluded?: Fiona Hill and Omer Taspinar
Turkey and Russia: Axis of The Excluded?: Fiona Hill and Omer Taspinar
Turkey and Russia: Axis of The Excluded?: Fiona Hill and Omer Taspinar
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Fiona Hill is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, former
Director of Strategic Planning at the Eurasia Foundation, and author of Energy Empire: Oil, Gas, and Russias
Revival. Omer Taspinar is the Director of Brookings Turkey Program, Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies, a columnist for the Turkish Daily Radikal and author
of Political Islam and Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey.
states like Turkey and Russia are a signal to the United States that old allies, new
friends and other states may not be amenable to its position on regional issues.
the Bush administration, the divergence of Turkish interests from those of the
United Sates is particularly troubling. In the wake of the 11 September 2001
terrorist attacks, the Turkish Republic was Washingtons ideal model for its
vision of the Islamic world. With its Muslim, democratic, secular, pro-Western
credentials and NATO membership, Turkey was the Bush administrations
strongest counterexample to the clash of civilizations the attacks seemed to
herald. Ankaras leadership in the International Security Assistance Force in
Afghanistan gained it additional praise from the administration, not only for
providing military assistance, but for further proving that the war against ter-
rorism was not a war against Islam.
Washingtons rosy view of Turkey in 200102 faded fast in the lead-up to the
US-led invasion of Iraq. On 1 March 2003, after six months of contentious mili-
tary, political and financial negotiations between Ankara and Washington, the
Turkish parliament denied US troops access to Iraq through Turkish territory,
and thus the ability to open a northern front against Baghdad. Turkeys decision
not only forced the Pentagon to change its original war plans, but also compli-
cated the post-war situation. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently
argued that the current Sunni militant insurrection in Iraq is in large part the
result of this absence of a northern front.2 Saddams Republican Guard was able
to retreat north and blend in with the civilian population. Turkey gained a place
of its own in Rumsfelds constructs of old versus new Europe thanks to the
heartburn it gave Washington.
Turkey and Russia: Axis of the Excluded? | 83
that enemy. It was a clear and present danger for Turkey, the only NATO member
directly bordering the USSR. From Turkeys perspective the Soviet Unions suc-
cessor state, Russia, now looks increasingly friendly. The Axis of Evil, with a
very different cast of characters, is hardly a substitute for the Evil Empire. Iraq,
Iran and, of course, North Korea have never posed existential threats to Turkey.
Bilateral USTurkish relations have entered a new phase, giving Ankara the
opportunity to reflect on other relationships.
with the United States, the management of its volatile relationships with Greece
and Cyprus, and its efforts to become a member of the European Union. While
there were bilateral visits and declarative protocols and agreements in the 1990s
and in 200001, the change after 2003 was quite dramatic.
Since then, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan have held multiple meetings, including one in July 2005
at Putins summer retreat in Sochi, on Russias Black Sea coast. Trade between
the two countries is at an all-time high, rising from $10 billion in 2004, to an esti-
mated $15bn in 2005, and projected to increase to $25bn by 2007.5 Russia now
accounts for more than 70% of Turkish natural gas imports thanks to a dedicated
gas export pipeline Blue Stream between the two countries, running under
the Black Sea, which started supplying gas in 2003. And Russia and Turkey are
now discussing additional energy deals. This includes the possibility at some
juncture of Turkey re-exporting Russian gas to Europe.
The relationship is not just fuelled by natural gas. Turkish construction com-
panies and consumer-goods companies like Enka, Alarko and Anadolu have
major ventures in Russia. Turkey was the top destination for Russian tour-
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ists some 1.7m in 2004.6 This is more than from any other country, except
Germany. The sting has been taken out of NATO enlargement through the crea-
tion of the NATORussian Council. Once-divisive issues such as Chechnya and
the Kurds have gradually faded. In their meetings in Sochi in July 2005, Putin
and Erdogan reportedly reached an agreement to support each others positions
on Chechnya and the Kurds expressing similar fears of terrorism and sepa-
ratism.7 This is a far cry from the 1990s when the Turkish government turned
a blind eye to their North Caucasus diasporas active support for the Chechen
cause, and when Russia allowed Kurdish associations with links to the Kurdish
Workers Party (PKK) to operate in Moscow.
These are all good reasons why Turkey and Russia have drawn together,
apart from their mutual disillusionment with the United States. Indeed, given
a history of imperial competition and frequent wars between the Russian and
Ottoman Empires since the eighteenth century, Cold War rivalry, and percep-
tions of competition in post-Soviet Eurasia, relations between Turkey and Russia
today are probably better than at any point in the last several centuries.
Turkey itself for the accession process. In any event, Turks increasingly think the
EU will find ways to exclude them.8 Russians are also certain that Turkey will
not be admitted. Both Turkey and Russia want the EU to recognise and respect
them as European Great Powers, with significant imperial histories and roles in
the Near East and Eurasia. Russia and Turkey are undergoing parallel revivals
of their imperial state traditions. In both countries, the imperial state religion,
Russian Orthodoxy and Sunni Islam respectively, is back in the political picture
as manifest in the personal and publicly acknowledged beliefs of President
Putin and Prime Minister Erdogan after a long period of absence.
Russia is becoming more Tsarist with all politics increasingly focused on
the central figure of the president and strong links between the Kremlin and the
Orthodox Church. It has been reinvigorated as a state and a regional power by
economic growth boosted by soaring oil revenues, and increasingly sees itself
as it did in the imperial past as a Eurasian civilisation complementary to
Europe. Turkey is coming to terms with its Ottoman history under the lead-
ership of Muslim-Democrats keen on pursuing a multidimensional foreign
policy. With its vibrant economy, large population and
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a fictional military confrontation, The Third World War, in 2010, where a venge-
ful Turkey joins forces with Russia for a military attack on the EU after German,
Austrian and French fascists kill Turks and Muslims in Europe.11
Among the political elite, in interviews in Moscow in September 2005, there
was considerable satisfaction with the state of RussianTurkish relations. And
in our meetings with Turkish political observers in Ankara and Istanbul in
October 2005, the general feeling was that Turkeys reassessment of its relation-
ship with Russia was long overdue. The Turkish government may have made a
tactical decision in 2003 to pursue rapprochement with Russia just as relations
were souring with the United States over Iraq, but senior Turkish officials noted
that they were now just trying to catch up politically on all the developments of
the last few years in trade and energy relations.
A troubling rapprochement
From the perspective of the United States, the rapprochement is troubling. In the
context of the Middle East, Turkey and Russia are increasingly sceptical about the
American-led war on terror. Ankara and Moscow have their own specific ter-
PROOF
rorist groups to worry about. Al-Qaeda is a lesser concern for Turkey and Russia,
in the face of PKK terrorism and Kurdish separatism, and Chechen (now broader
North Caucasian) terrorism and separatism. In their view, these groups threaten
their territorial integrities and prevailing conceptions of statehood. The threat for
Turkey and Russia is very different from the external threat to the United States
from stateless jihadi networks. In Turkey, for example, the fact that domestic
groups linked with al-Qaeda targeted the British Consulate, a British bank and
two synagogues in Istanbul in November 2003 was not perceived as a threat to
the Turkish state, or to Turkish secularism. Instead, these incidents were seen as
attacks on Western and Jewish targets; and the main terrorist threat to Turkish
interests is still considered to come from Kurdish separatists of the PKK. Likewise,
in Russia, although there are documented ties between Chechen terrorists and
international jihadi groups with links to al-Qaeda, the Russian public still sees its
terrorist problem as primarily a domestic one. The overwhelming majority of ter-
rorist attacks in Russia have been carried out by ethnic Chechens and members of
other groups from the Russian North Caucasus.
Turkey and Russia also associate Iraq not with the war against terrorism, but
with destabilising chaos that has damaged their national interests Turkeys
more profoundly, but Russias too, given its Iraqi oil contracts. In Iran, Turkeys
main interest is to have a stable ally against Kurdish nationalism and to
improve trade relations. Both Ankara and Tehran have major concerns about
the spill-over effect of Kurdish separatism in northern Iraq on their own sizable
Turkey and Russia: Axis of the Excluded? | 87
become the basis for more, not less, regional conflict; while Russia sees an anti-
Russian alliance emerging around the Black Sea, if not across Eurasia.
do not interfere with Turkeys march toward the EU over the next 1015 years.
Russia, at this juncture, would be delighted to keep Ukraine and Georgia out of
NATO and the EU permanently. Senior Russian officials, in meetings in Moscow
in September 2005, derisively dismissed the image of these Lilliputian states
running from one master in Moscow to another in Brussels as fast as they can.
Abkhazian standoff
Especially tricky is the issue of Georgias separatist region of Abkhazia, which
has fallen under the de facto sway of Russia after more than a decade of frozen
conflict with Tbilisi. Most of Abkhazias residents have obtained special Russian
travel documents to replace expired Soviet-era passports. The Russian rouble
circulates as the official currency, and Moscow has
repeatedly threatened to use the anticipated inde- A pro-Abkhaz
pendence of Kosovo as a precedent for recognition of
Abkhazias de jure separation from Tbilisi.
diaspora in Turkey
The presence of a pro-Abkhaz diaspora in Turkey is a complicating
is a complicating factor. Thanks to the exodus of North
factor
Caucasian ethnic groups from the Russian empire to the
Ottoman empire in the 1860s, there are more ethnic Abkhaz (or Cherkess) living in
Turkey today than in Abkhazia itself. Over the last decade, trade between Turkey
and Abkhazia has increased. Using new coast guard patrol boats provided by
the United States, Georgia has begun to intercept Turkish vessels sailing to the
Abkhaz port of Sukhumi, arresting their captains and crews.
PROOF
Feeling excluded
It is, of course, unfair to put all the blame on the United States for the deterioration
of relations with Turkey. In fact, Turkeys problem with the Bush administration
90 | Fiona Hill and Omer Taspinar
is related to its own domestic insecurity with political Islam and the Kurds. For
the military guardians of Ataturks legacy, this means the relentless pursuit of
any deviation from the secular and Turkish character of the Kemalist Republic,
be it Islamic or Kurdish. The United States, by supporting the idea of Turkey
serving as a model for the Islamic world and by relying on the Kurds in Iraq,
is now on the wrong side of the Turkeys Kemalist debate.
By promoting moderate Islam, the United States alarms Turkish secular-
ists. Although Washington has now erased model from its Turkish political
vocabulary replacing it with creative formulas like source of inspiration16
the Kurdish problem is trickier to solve. Americas strong partnership with
the Kurds in Iraq, the new Iraqi constitutions loose federalism, the status
of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and the Pentagons reluctance to take action
against PKK terrorists in northern Iraq all rattle the Kemalist guardians in
the Turkish military.
More generally, Turkey and Russia are frustrated that the United States does
not consider their interests in its forays into their neighbourhoods. They want
Washington to take their views seriously. The TurkishRussian relationship
PROOF
a Kurdish state. Turkey does not want to feel punished for its failure to assist
the United States in Iraq in 2003. This requires some serious diplomacy and a
real strategic dialogue with Turkey.
Notes
1 The background interviews for this Eyes, U.S. Remains the Enemy,
article were conducted by the authors Washington Post, 10 April 2005, p. A21.
in Ankara, Istanbul, Moscow, Tbilisi According to the German Marshall
and Washington DC with a range Funds (GMF) Transatlantic Trends
of Turkish, Russian, Georgian and Survey of September 2005, a slightly
American senior government officials, lower 77% of Turks found the US
policy analysts, businessmen, jour- administrations global leadership to
nalists and embassy representatives, be undesirable. See the GMF report
between July and October 2005. at http://www.transatlantictrends.org/
2 In March 2005, appearing on US televi- doc/TTKeyFindings2005.pdf.
sion talk shows, Rumsfeld stated that 4 Orkun Uar and Burak Turna, Metal
he wished US troops had not been Firtina [Metal Storm] (Istanbul:
blocked from entering Iraq through TimasYaynevi, 2004).
PROOF
Turkey, and asserted that this had 5 In 2005, the Turkish Minister of
enabled the post-war insurgency in State for Foreign Trade, Kursat
Iraq to flourish. Given the level of Tuzmen, projected that the trade
the insurgency today, two years later, volume between Russia and
clearly if we had been able to get the Turkey would continue to grow
4th Infantry Division in from the north, during 2006 and 2007, reaching
in through Turkey, more of the Iraqi, a projected goal of $25bn in line
Saddam Hussein, Baathist regime with the Turkish governments
would have been captured or killed. Eurasia Action Plan. See http://
The insurgency today would be less, cnnturk.com/HABER/haber_detay.
he said, adding that the resulting thrust asp?PID=318&HID=5&haberID=56090.
of the US invasion through southern 6 See An Historic TurkishRussian
Iraq had enabled many insurgents Exchange, Turkey Now (website of
to evade capture in the north. See the TurkishUS Business Council),
Agence France-Presse, 21 March 2005, January 2005, at http://www.turkey-
at http://www.turkishpress.com/news. now.org/default.aspx?pgID=111.
asp?id=39081; see also CNNs cov- 7 Author interviews with Turkish
erage of Rumsfelds statements at embassy and Foreign Ministry offi-
http:// www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/ cials in Washington DC and Ankara,
meast/03/20/iraq.anniversary/. October 2005.
3 The January 2005 BBC World Service 8 Author interviews in Turkey in August,
Poll, which was conducted in 21 September and October 2005, with a
countries, indicated that a record 82% broad range of politicians, government
of Turks perceived President Bushs officials, analysts and journalists. For
policies as negative for global peace an outspoken and articulate presenta-
and regional security in the Middle tion of this view by a leading Turkish
East. See Karl Vick, In Many Turks commentator, see Hasan Unal, Turkey
92 | Fiona Hill and Omer Taspinar
Would Be Better Off Outside the EU, 11 Burak Turna, nc Dnya Savasi
Financial Times, 17 December 2004. In [The Third World War] (Istanbul:
2002, one of Turkeys most prominent TimasYaynevi, 2005).
generals, Major-General Tuncer Kln, 12 Presentation by the Georgian foreign
the secretary of the National Security minister at the Brookings Institution
Council, was one of the first to suggest in Washington DC, Thursday, 3 June
in a public presentation that Turkey 2004; also author interviews with
should perhaps abandon its efforts Turkish embassy and Foreign Ministry
to secure EU membership and seek officials in Washington, DC and
out alternative alliances with other Ankara in October 2005.
neighbours such as Russia or Iran. See 13 Presentation at TEPAV-EPRI
Owen Matthews, Europes Orphan: A roundtable discussion on Latest
Showdown is Brewing Between Turkey Developments in the Caucasus and
and the EU, Newsweek International, 22 Russia: A Strategic Perspective for
April 2002. Turkey, at TOBB-ETU University,
9 It is worth noting, however, that in the Ankara, 12 October 2005.
GMFs Transatlantic Trends Survey 14 Author interview with senior BSEC
of 2005, Russia and the United States representative in Washington DC, 8
now enjoy the same level of popularity July 2005.
in Turkey, and that Chinas image in 15 Author interview with Turkish
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