Are Turkey and Russia enemies or friends? A. Erdi Öztürk and Eda Ayaydın explain the two countries have a complex relationship that can best be understood as ambivalent and shaped by “adaptive opportunism”.
A century ago, Turkey and Russia stood as adversaries across the Black Sea, their interactions marked by strategic rivalry and mutual distrust. In the present day, the dynamic has shifted significantly, yet paradoxically, remains complex.
The two countries simultaneously engage in high-level defence cooperation, evidenced by arms deals and military coordination, while also backing opposing factions in various regional conflicts. This multifaceted relationship defies conventional classifications of international alliances or enmity.
Rather than being framed by a coherent ideological alignment or anchored in institutionalised partnerships, the contemporary Turkey–Russia relationship is best understood as one of strategic ambivalence. It is shaped by pragmatic calculations, mutual recognition of regional influence and a shared disposition toward adaptive opportunism.
This opportunism enables both actors to navigate shifting geopolitical landscapes while exploiting short-term advantages without committing to long-term ideological or structural entanglements. Consequently, their relationship oscillates between competition and cooperation, often simultaneously, reflecting a broader trend in twenty-first-century diplomacy where transnationalism increasingly overrides traditional alliance paradigms.
Multidimensional engagement
Russia has always occupied a critical place in Turkey’s foreign policy calculus, historically as both a rival and a necessary neighbour. While the two countries have often stood on opposite sides of geopolitical alignments, recent decades, especially under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin, have witnessed a marked evolution in their relationship.
In today’s increasingly fractured global order, Turkey and Russia have forged a complex web of interdependencies that transcend their immediate regions. From the Black Sea to the Middle East, and from the South Caucasus to North Africa, their interactions reflect not just bilateral pragmatism but also the broader restructuring of global power relations.
Neither fully aligned nor strictly adversarial, Ankara and Moscow now operate through fluid networks of strategic cooperation and calibrated rivalry. This multidimensional engagement demonstrates how regional powers, amid a weakening liberal order, increasingly rely on transactional ties and flexible diplomacy to navigate instability and assert influence beyond their traditional spheres.
The post-2000 rapprochement
Since the early 2000s, Ankara and Moscow have gradually re-engaged, not as ideological allies, but as pragmatic actors navigating a shifting global order through transactional cooperation. Their rapprochement is driven less by normative alignment and more by converging strategic grievances vis-à-vis the West and a shared interest in exploiting geopolitical openings. Russia offers energy resources, nuclear technology, and advanced defence systems. Turkey, in turn, provides economic access, strategic transit corridors, diplomatic flexibility and a disruptive presence within the NATO framework.
This logic of mutual accommodation is perhaps most visible in conflict zones such as Syria, where the two powers support opposing sides yet maintain robust channels of dialogue through deconfliction mechanisms and parallel diplomatic processes. Similarly, in Libya and the South Caucasus, Ankara and Moscow back rival actors but continue to coordinate tactically to avoid direct confrontation. These patterns do not reflect inconsistencies but rather constitute the underlying architecture of a relationship predicated on managed instability and adaptive resilience – hallmarks of their evolving strategic entente in an increasingly multipolar world.
Turkey and Russia’s relationship has grown even more intricate in recent years through their interactions in critical conflict theatres such as Ukraine, Syria and the broader Black Sea region. Turkey’s vocal support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, its sale of Bayraktar drones to Kyiv, and its non-recognition of Crimea’s annexation place it at odds with Russian strategic priorities. Yet, Ankara has simultaneously resisted joining western sanctions against Moscow, positioning itself as a potential mediator.
In the Black Sea, Turkey balances its commitments under the Montreux Convention with efforts to preserve regional stability, often coordinating with Russia to avoid direct escalation. Meanwhile, in Syria, their ongoing cooperation, despite supporting rival factions, illustrates a model of conflict management rooted in tactical pragmatism rather than strategic convergence. These layered and at times contradictory interactions underscore a relationship defined not by binary alignment, but by situational cooperation and calibrated competition across multiple overlapping theatres of influence.
Turkey, Russia and the Arctic
Perhaps, the most revealing stage for exploiting geopolitical openings lies not in the Middle East or the Black Sea, but further north, in the Arctic. Though seemingly distant from their traditional zones of influence, the Arctic has so far been primarily pursued by Turkey through its relationship with Russia, which projects their evolving foreign policy identities.
For Russia, the Arctic represents a core pillar of national security and economic development, as melting ice caps open new shipping lanes and energy extraction opportunities. Russia has heavily militarised its Arctic frontier and frames it as an extension of its great power status. While Turkey has no direct Arctic presence, it has shown growing interest in polar research and adopted a Polar Science Strategy extending to 2035, which includes the goal of obtaining observer status at the Arctic Council.
More recently, Turkey acceded to the Svalbard Treaty in 2024, an archipelago under Norwegian sovereignty where Russia is a historical actor and maintains a presence in two settlements on Spitsbergen. That same year, Russia expressed interest in establishing a scientific station in partnership with BRICS countries and Turkey.
Notably, the Turkish company Kuzey Star built a floating dock for Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy company, which now services icebreakers in Murmansk. Rosatom and Russian officials have also engaged in discussions with their Turkish counterparts on the development of infrastructure along the Northern Sea Route.
Moreover, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, bilateral trade between Ankara and Moscow has more than doubled, peaking at just over $68 billion in 2022 before stabilising at $46 billion in 2024. Turkish refineries, notably STAR and Tüpraş, have processed billions of euros’ worth of Russian crude oil, re-exporting refined products to countries currently imposing sanctions on Russia.
Thus, Turkey’s transactional diplomacy in the Arctic with Russia manifests through economic activities such as shipping and infrastructure construction, as well as prospective scientific collaboration. This signals Ankara’s broader ambition to be perceived as a global, not merely regional, actor. The Arctic can be viewed as a testing ground for Turkey’s diplomatic agility and Russia’s strategic assertiveness.
It also highlights how both states engage beyond their immediate neighbourhoods, seeking influence in emerging geopolitical theatres, often through quiet diplomacy, scientific engagement or multilateral participation, without necessarily provoking direct confrontation. In this sense, the Arctic exemplifies the broader pattern of managed competition and selective cooperation that defines the Turkey-Russia relationship in the twenty-first century.
Turkey and Russia represent a deliberate form of strategic insertion, whereby Ankara leverages its relationship with Moscow to gain visibility and relevance in geopolitical theatres traditionally dominated by great powers. This quiet expansion into the Arctic is reflective of Turkey’s broader foreign policy strategy: navigating global disorder not through formal alliances or structural commitments, but through agile, transactional alignments that amplify its perceived status as an emerging power.
Militarised prestige and economic fragility
These manoeuvres are particularly notable when contrasted with the domestic economic realities in both countries. Turkey and Russia are grappling with severe inflation, currency devaluation and widespread socioeconomic grievances. Yet despite their fragile macroeconomic conditions, both regimes continue to invest disproportionately in military modernisation, energy geopolitics and symbolic displays of strategic capacity abroad.
This paradox points to a broader pattern: a form of prestige-driven power projection in which external activism is pursued to compensate for internal fragilities. Rather than reflecting genuine economic strength, these performances are mechanisms of regime survival and international signalling. Indeed, both countries exhibit characteristics of what may be termed militarised developmentalism, where the state’s resources are disproportionately funnelled into defence industries and geopolitical theatre rather than sustainable economic development.
In this context, claims of “emerging economic power” status are not rooted in structural economic transformation, but in state-led narratives of technological autonomy, defence export capacity and global assertiveness. The militarisation of foreign policy, especially under conditions of economic duress, functions as both a domestic legitimacy strategy and a diplomatic currency.
Turkey’s selective involvement in Russia’s Arctic ambitions is therefore emblematic of a wider phenomenon: the use of opportunistic, transactional diplomacy to carve out a seat at strategic tables from which it was historically excluded. It also underscores how both Ankara and Moscow have adapted to the erosion of liberal international norms by embracing flexible, multi-vector foreign policies, predicated less on economic fundamentals and more on the instrumentalisation of strategic geography, defence capability and symbolic capital.
Authoritarian chemistry
Growing authoritarianism in Turkey and autocracy in Russia facilitate a form of cooperation that often proves easier than Ankara’s alignment with western liberal states. At the personal level, Putin is strategically focused and militarily driven, whereas Erdoğan tends to adopt a bargaining posture, constantly seeking leverage and waiting for the right moments to negotiate. In 2022, by delaying Finland and Sweden’s NATO accession, Turkey inserted itself into Arctic security dynamics, highlighting how it uses moments of geopolitical friction to assert influence.
Ultimately, Turkey’s relationship with Russia is best understood not as part of a coherent grand strategy, but as a practice of adaptive opportunism, a readiness to exploit shifting geopolitical openings, forge temporary alignments and manoeuvre between rival camps without permanent allegiance. From the Black Sea to the Arctic, Ankara plays a long game built on short-term gains.
In this context, Turkey’s Arctic activity functions as a form of peripheral diplomacy. It is a symbolic gesture of loyalty to Russia, a subtle challenge to western coherence and a strategic attempt to stake a claim to great-power status without provoking direct confrontation. Its Arctic presence is not defined by geography, but by association.
As the liberal international order fragments and middle powers assert new ambitions, Turkey’s evolving approach to Russia offers a revealing case of how flexibility, ambiguity and symbolic entanglement can serve as powerful diplomatic tools, even in regions where a state lacks historical presence or territorial proximity.
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: quetions123 / Shutterstock.com
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