Russian-Turkish relations in the era of Vladimir Putin

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the Turkish-Russian relations from the year 2000 to 2019. In this 19-year period, the Turkish-Russian relations went through different stages due to the conflict of interests between the global powers in the major international incidents of the early 21st Century such as the Russo­Georgian War, the Ukrainian Euromaidan Revolution, the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War. The thesis aims at analyzing these changing relations between the two states through the perspective of the Neorealist Theory of International Relations which puts emphasis on power politics. In the thesis, the Turkish foreign policy is explained according to the positions of the two great powers, the United States and Russia, concerning the Turkish national security. The thesis looks at the major global incidents of the first two dec­ades of the 2000s in order to provide a better understanding of how unex­pected changes were caused in the Turkish foreign policy by these events.