Turkey's policy towards russia: why, despite geopolitical confrontation, energy cooperation persists?

Turkey's Policy towards Russia: why, despite Geopolitical Confrontation, Energy Cooperation Persists? The subject of this thesis is Turkey’s policy towards Russia, in particular focusing on its energy cooperation with Russia. Accordingly, the main questions of the work is why, despite continuing geopolitical confrontation between two countries, Turkey still willingly engages into energy cooperation with Russia. The aim of this qualitative study is to explain what external factors (or structural foreign policy factors) after the Cold War led to increasing Turkish cooperation with Russia in the field of energy policy. The work, using case study method, process-tracing technique, will examine the sequence of events that shaped Turkey's foreign policy towards Russia in the field of energy and will distinguish the main breakthroughs that have led to the current state of bilateral relations between the two countries. The analysis of external factors will focus on two major countries and centres of international power between which Turkey found itself in the arena of world politics during the aftermath of the Cold War – United States and Russia. Thus, the work will analyse how US and Russia’s policies shaped Turkey’s energy policy and led to its increasing cooperation with geopolitically rival Russia. The work discusses the process of Turkey’s engagement into various energy projects with Russia during the post-Cold War period from 1994 to 2016. It analyses how US and Russia’s policies, and accordingly changing Turkey’s relations with the respective countries during that time, influenced its growing energy cooperation with Russia. After analysing the case, the paper concludes by distinguishing three main breakthroughs that led to current state of Turkey-Russia’s bilateral relations: 1) Turkey’s engagement into the “Blue Stream” natural gas pipeline project in 1997; 2) The beginning of military actions against Iraq by US in 2003; 3) Official beginning of Turkish-Russian strategic cooperation and nuclear energy cooperation in 2010. The paper also concludes by distinguishing four structural factors, that emerged from the research of US and Russia’s policies towards Turkey, which influenced Turkey’s foreign energy policy: 1) how an ally / opponent (USA / Russia) perceives the strategic importance of a state (Turkey) in the structure of international relations; 2) the strategic importance an ally / opponent gives for energy cooperation with the state; 3) the ability of an ally / opponent to understand the interests of the state and accordingly formulate appropriate policies towards it; 4) the ability of an ally / opponent to pursue a coherent policy towards the state