Post-War Period in the Name of Russia and Turkey

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, depriving Turkey of any strategic depth, relegated it to the rank of a buffer state between the British and French mandated states in the south and former Russia in the north. It was the culmination of a very old geopolitical struggle between maritime empires blockading the eastern Mediterranean and a great northern power wanting access to the warm seas. This fundamental opposition, which forms the backdrop of the Crimean War, as well as the contemporary Ukrainian conflict, remains intact. However, visible signs of Ukraine’s weakening suggest a change in relations between Russia and Turkey. If we take into account the fact that the Turkic-speaking hinterlands have geopolitically disassociated themselves from the Ottoman center, it is likely that the latter will soon have to negotiate more with Russia.

During the existence of the Ottoman Empire, there was a fierce struggle with Russia for dominance in the Balkans and access to warm seas. Between the Renaissance and the 20^th century, eleven wars took place between the two powers. These conflicts were favorable to Russia, which succeeded in dismantling the declining southern empire. Sometimes it had to ally with other powers to achieve its goals, such as Persia in 1735. If we turn south, we can see that the Eastern Issue is merely a romanticized form of the West’s desire to control the Eastern Mediterranean. Hervé Coutau-Bégarie explained it in 2005: “To avoid the emergence of Eurasia, the Maritime Empires must control three geographical points: the passage between the Korean Peninsula and Japan in East Asia, the passage between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea in the Northern European region, and between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea (the Dardanelles) in the European East” (1). The strategic aspect of controlling Constantinople had not escaped Bonaparte’s attention, who confided to Las Casas:

“An independent kingdom of Constantinople with its provinces was established in the North, which was to serve as a barrier to Russian power, as was claimed for France, by the creation of the kingdom of Belgium. I could split the Turkish Empire with Russia; it has been discussed between us more than once. Constantinople has always saved it. This capital was the greatest trouble, the real stumbling block. Russia wanted this; I must not give it up: it is too valuable a key; it alone is worth an empire: he who possesses it can rule the world” (2).

After ascending to the throne in 1825, “Russian Emperor Nicholas I sought to seize the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to settle in Constantinople. From the moment of Greek independence, the king wanted to destroy the Sublime Porte. By seeking to impose its influence on the Slavic provinces of the Balkans, Russia could gain economic outlets to the Mediterranean via the Black Sea, something the Russians had sought since the time of Peter the Great. England also has ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean to maintain its commercial interests in the Middle East and on the Silk Road. France, officially the defender of the Holy Places and Catholics, wants to avoid forming a coalition between Austria and Russia against the Ottoman Empire. Russia then turned to England, proposing to partition the Ottoman Empire: England gets Egypt and Crete; Russia gets the Balkan provinces, Constantinople, and the Straits. But England refused, because the integrity of the Ottoman Empire served for it as a guarantee against Russian progress. France thus somewhat accidentally became involved in the conflict. Indeed, Napoleon III and Nicholas I maintained good relations, and neither of them planned to start a war ‘over a simple monkish quarrel.’ The site of the conflict is the Crimean Peninsula, and the French target is the fortress of Sevastopol. From the beginning of the conflict, Allied fleets attacked Russian positions and ports. Thus, on April 22, 1854, the port of Odessa was bombarded by the Anglo-French fleet” (3). In 1856, the Treaty of Paris neutralized Russia and proclaimed the neutrality of the Black Sea. This is how Turkey eventually became a kind of “barrier erected against Russian advancement into the Mediterranean through the Straits or into the Middle East” (4). For this reason, “throughout the Cold War, Turkish space would represent a very important link in the West’s defense system. It serves as a barrier to the Black Sea and also provides a link between European and Asian means of encircling the Soviet Union” (5). However, when Russia brought Syria into its sphere of influence in 2015, a geopolitical reversal of the first order occurred. By replacing the former French and British Mandatory Powers, Russia was able to operate behind Turkey’s back, on a very sensitive part of its sciatic nerve. Such an outreach could not be left without consequences, especially since the Ottoman leadership then lost control of the Central Asian Corps, which had been segmented in 1923.

After nearly four centuries of confrontation, the Ottoman and Russian empires collapsed. The first one in 1923, and the second one in 1990. The geopolitical implications were significant, as the two losers saw a number of republics emerge on their doorstep in Transcaucasia, eager to maintain their new independence. However, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan are believed to have the largest undeveloped oil and gas reserves on the planet. “These peripheral republics were once relatively marginal in the Soviet system, but today they have found themselves at the center of a struggle for influence between Russia and Western powers and are trying to take advantage of this situation as best they can to ‘assert themselves as independent actors’” (6). Indeed, the Central Asian states do not want to exchange the Russian Big Brother for the new Turkish Big Brother (7). These young republics also did not hesitate to reuse the concept of Eurasianism developed by Russia for their own purposes:

“Eurasianism of the 1920s represents in many respects a little-known Russian version of Western Orientalism of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. However, it is distinguished from by its anti-Western iconoclastic spirit, rooted in Russia’s ambiguous cultural position in relation to Europe: Orientalism for Russian intellectuals is not a simple exoticism, a search for otherness, but a way of asserting their otherness from the West. Thus, the original Eurasianism is intersected by contradictory remarks about the East. All Eurasians agree to position themselves more to the East than to the West, all have a positive but common discourse on the subject: Russia is closer to Asia than to Europe, its history will be the history of meeting and then merging with the Turkic world, with the Genghis Khan steppe. Today, Tatar and Kazakh neo-Eurasians demand historical rehabilitation of the Turkic world of Eurasia and rebalancing of forces in their favor both in the post-Soviet space and in Russia itself” (8).

Nevertheless, the Ottoman brain lost control of the Empire’s body. The latter is all the more unstable because it inherited – as in Lebanon – the multi-communal system of the Ottoman Empire (9) without benefiting from its centralization. In geopolitics, as in architecture, the one who opposes supports himself. The memory of eleven Russo-Turkish wars does not prevent Russia and Turkey from having common interests: Russia needs Turkey because of the Straits, but also because it represents a useful partner in Central Asia, a bulwark against a possible upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism, and a counterweight to Iran (10). For its part, Turkey has an interest in not ignoring Russia’s actions in Syria while benefiting from northern hydrocarbons partially lost due to sanctions. That’s why Turkey, along with India and China, is circumventing Western sanctions against Russia. Turkey’s exports to Russia increased from $6 billion in 2021 to nearly $11 billion in 2023, an 80% increase in two years (11). Turkish companies saved about $2 billion on energy bills in 2023 by increasing imports of discounted Russian oil and oil products. This also allows Turkey to limit inflation. Naturally, if the military situation deteriorates further to the detriment of the Ukrainians, the entire Russian-Turkish balance in the Balkans will change. From this perspective, the current escalation of the monetary war between the Western and Eastern empires in Kosovo is one of the weak signals pointing to future military tensions in the region.

(1) Hervé Coutau-Bégarie, Ionnais Loucas, « Histoire des doctrines stratégiques », École pratique des hautes études. Section des sciences historiques et philologiques. Livret-Annuaire 19, 2005, p. 365-368.
(2) Hervé Coutau-Bégarie, Ionnais Loucas, op. cit., p. 365-368.
(3) Bénédicte Rolland-Villemot, « La guerre de Crimée et le Traité de Paris : un enjeu géopolitique en Méditerranée », Cahiers slaves, n°14, 2016. Les chemins d’Odessa, p. 123-133.
(4) Philippe Marchesin, « Géopolitique de la Turquie à partir du Grand échiquier de Zbignew Brzezinski », Études internationales, 33, 2002, p. 137–157.
(5) Philippe Marchesin, op. cit., p. 137–157.
(6) Frédéric Grare, « La nouvelle donne énergétique autour de la Mer Caspienne : une perspective géopolitique », CEMOTI, n°23, 1997. La Caspienne. Une nouvelle frontière, p. 15-38.
(7) Philippe Marchesin, op. cit., p. 137–157.
(8) Marlène Laruelle, « Jeux de miroir. L’idéologie eurasiste et les allogènes de l’Empire russe », CEMOTI, n°28, 1999. Turquie Israël, p. 207-230.
(9) Sossie Andezian, Georges Corm, « Géopolitique du conflit libanais », Archives de sciences sociales des religions, n°66/2, 1988. p. 262.
(10) Philippe Marchesin, « Géopolitique de la Turquie à partir du Grand échiquier de Zbignew Brzezinski », Études internationales, 33, 2002, p. 137–157.
(11) Le trio Chine, Inde et Turquie permet aux exportations de Moscou de gagner 130 milliards de dollars en deux ans, soit pratiquement l’équivalent de la chute des ventes de la Russie vers les 27 pays de l’UE, les États-Unis, le Japon et la Corée du Sud (-139 milliards de dollars).