Turkey’s Black Sea Predicament: Challenging or Accommodating Russia?
Mitat Çelikpala; Emre Erşen · PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs, 2008
Collection summary
A contemporary international relations article examining the shifting security balance in the Black Sea and Turkey–Russia relations after 2008.
Published in PERCEPTIONS, this English-language article analyses the transformation of the Black Sea strategic balance after the 2008 Russo-Georgian war and the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and the challenges Turkey faces (the Montreux Convention status quo, Russia's military build-up, A2/AD zones, NATO). Its focus is entirely on twenty-first-century geopolitics and it has no direct bearing on the 1918 Army of Islam or the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. Any link to the collection is limited to the long-term geopolitical background of the Black Sea–Caucasus region.
The source's own abstract
his article seeks to explore the development of the new security environment in the Black Sea and its implications for the future of regional dialogue between Turkey and Russia. The radically altered strategic balance in the Black Sea after the Russian- Georgian war in 2008 and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 have urged Turkish policymakers to revise their traditional policies toward this region. Yet Ankara currently faces four main challenges in this quest: i) maintaining the status quo established by the Montreux Convention, ii) protecting its interests vis-à-vis Russia’s strengthened military presence in the Black Sea, iii) dealing with the significant security implications of the three Russian anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) spheres built around Turkish * Prof., Kadir Has University, Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences, Istanbul, E-mail: mitat@khas.edu.tr ** Assoc. Prof., Marmara University, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Istanbul, E-mail: eersen@marmara.edu.tr PERCEPTIONS, Summer 2018, Volume XXIII, Number 2, pp. 72-92. 72 Turkey’s Black Sea Predicament: Challenging or Accommodating Russia? 73 of the two opposing blocs after World War II, the geopolitical balance that was established in the Black Sea with their cooperation managed to survive the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 provided fresh opportunities for the establishment of a new environment of dialogue and cooperation between Ankara and Moscow. The two countries worked together in order to preserve their privileged status in the Black Sea, and built a number of regional mechanisms to check the expansion of Western military influence in the region. Yet the Russian-Georgian war in 2008 and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 urged Turkish leaders to revise their policies about the Black Sea. The Turkish-Russian disagreement over Syria, which triggered a serious crisis between the two countries in late 2015, also significantly hampered the regional dialogue between Ankara and Moscow. Straits. Yet the Ottoman supremacy was challenged by an ever-expanding Russian Empire, which strived to gain access to the Black Sea’s warm waters. The Ottoman-Russian wars of the 18th and 19th centuries – including the Crimean War of 1853-1856 – were the most important signs of the fierce geopolitical rivalry between the Ottoman sultans and the Russian tsars over the Black Sea. Following the dissolution of the two empires after World War I, their successor states- the newly founded Republic of Turkey and the Soviet Union- succeeded in developing a different relationship with each other. Moscow’s economic and military support for the Turkish War of Independence in Anatolia started a brand new period in Turkish-Russian relations. Eventually, during the 1920s and 1930s the Black Sea became a region of cooperation between the two countries in paralle
Index
- Units and institutions
- NATO
The source's keywords
Black Sea · Caucasus · Jet Crisis · Jet Krizi · Kafkaslar · Karadeniz · Montreux Convention · Montreux Sözleşmesi · NATO · Russia · Rusya · Turkey · Türkiye