To the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who was reelected for his third presidential term this May under the campaign slogan ‘The Century of Turkey’ – it seems that the time has come to realize his country’s geopolitical aspirations of becoming a regional power. Auspiciously, recent geopolitical shifts and global instability have created multiple opportunities for Turkey to expand its influence across its neighborhood. The South Caucasus is one such region where Turkey has gained ample room to realize this ambition in recent years, not least due to Russia’s diminishing influence in the region after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Azerbaijan’s takeover of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh this September was supported by Turkey, as its strongest ally. However, any further military escalation in the region would not be in Ankara’s interest.
Turkey’s foreign policy goals
The year 2023 marks one hundred years since the Turkish Republic was founded in the aftermath of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The symbolism of this date is hard to miss. After a hundred years in existence, Turkey seems to be fundamentally reorienting its foreign policy. Since its establishment, Turkey has consistently pursued integration into Western institutions. It joined NATO as early as 1952 and the Council of Europe in 1950. It became an associated member of the European Economic Community – the predecessor of the EU – in 1963 and acquired EU candidate status in 2005. Lately, however, anti-Western sentiment has been growing among both the Turkish public and the country’s elites. Turkey’s EU integration process has been deadlocked for over a decade now, while its NATO membership has been questioned by its own leaders. Turkey is deeply suspicious about the US presence in the Middle East due to Washington’s support for Kurdish militias that Ankara considers to be major security threats. Finally, Turkey’s shift in domestic politics – from a secular democracy towards a conservative authoritarian system with strong religious influences – has put it at odds with Western values.
Turkey’s recent foreign policy has been based on the assumption that the global influence of the West is waning and the world is growing increasingly multipolar. Ankara has an ambition to become one of the poles in the dawning post-Western world, and it thus pursues an expansionist foreign policy and does not shy away from transactional relations with any other state. As a result, Turkey has maintained friendly relations with Russia even after its invasion of Ukraine, offering Moscow a major lifeline in trade and transportation. At the same time, Ankara has supplied Kyiv with military equipment and closed the Black Sea straits to Russian warships, citing its rights under the Montreux Convention. It has also sought security cooperation with China, with Erdogan declaring in September 2022 that Turkey intends to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. At the same time, while at odds with Western governments on the political level, Turkey has remained an active member of NATO, sending a peacekeeping force to Kosovo and taking part in the Alliance’s military drills in the Baltic Sea earlier this year. So far, Turkey seems to have managed to reconcile these ostensibly contradictory policies, prompting observers to call it the ‘ultimate fence sitter’.
Turkey’s interests in the South Caucasus
Located to Turkey’s east, the small region of the South Caucasus has lately offered new strategic opportunities for Ankara, even if it still is not a foreign policy priority. First, the South Caucasus provides a link between Turkey and Central Asia – a region of mostly Turkic-speaking countries where Ankara has looked to increase its influence since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Turkey is also seeking access to the energy-rich Caspian Sea region in order to satisfy its own energy needs as well as to fulfill its ambition of becoming a regional energy hub. At the same time, the geopolitical competition between Turkey and Iran is also unfolding in the South Caucasus, and Turkey’s current upper hand – resulting from Azerbaijan’s victory in the Second Karabakh war in 2020 and its subsequent takeover of the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh this September – is perceived as advantageous in this respect.
Turkey’s relations with Azerbaijan – a culturally and linguistically close neighbor – have been consistently strong, epitomized by the popular slogan ‘one nation, two states’. Azerbaijan’s victory in the Second Karabakh War was to a significant extent thanks to Turkey’s (and Israel’s) military assistance. Ankara has further expanded its political and diplomatic presence in the region by opening a consulate in Shusha (a town in Nagorno-Karabakh that Baku took control of in 2020) and signing an official treaty of alliance with Baku (the Shusha Declaration).
On the other hand, Turkey has never established diplomatic relations with Armenia, mainly due to Turkey’s denial of the mass killings of Ottoman Armenians during World War I. Nevertheless, there have been multiple attempts to normalize relations, including after the war of 2020. Air travel between the two countries was reestablished in 2022 and both states appointed representatives for relations with the other side. One unexpected positive side effect of the disastrous earthquake in eastern Turkey this February was the reopening of the Turkish-Armenian land border – after being closed for thirty years – in order to enable the delivery of humanitarian aid. The border was nevertheless reclosed afterwards, and subsequent attempts to keep it open to, at minimum, third-country nationals (non-Armenians and non-Turks) have not materialized thus far. One of the reasons for this lack of progress is Azerbaijan’s insistence that Turkey not extend any carrots to Armenia before Azerbaijan fulfills its goals with regards to Nagorno-Karabakh and the peace agreement with Armenia (although the prospects for such an agreement being concluded by the end of the year – as it had previously been anticipated – seem less likely after Azerbaijan’s military campaign in September).
The risk of a broader conflict in the South Caucasus lingers
The risk of another escalation in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict cannot be excluded. Armenians currently fear an intervention by Azerbaijan into their territory, and they have valid reasons for this concern. Last year, Azerbaijan attacked Armenia along their undemarcated border, seizing control over strategic heights on Armenian territory. Furthermore, there is a lack of agreement about a railroad connection – part of the 2020 ceasefire agreement – between Azerbaijan with its exclave Nakhichevan that would go through Armenia’s southern Syunik region. Armenians want to have control over such a route, but Azerbaijan – along with Russia – insist that the connection must be extraterritorial. Baku has previously threatened to use force if Yerevan does not cede to this demand. Revisionist claims voiced in Azerbaijan that Armenia’s Syunik region is actually western Azerbaijan – marked by the launch of the TV/YouTube channel ‘Western Azerbaijan’– further feed into Armenia’s fear of a military intervention.
Turkey also maintains an interest in a shorter land connection to Nakhichevan, which borders Turkey. President Erdogan’s visit to Nakhichevan, where he met his Azerbaijani counterpart just days after the military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, once again confirmed Ankara’s full support for Baku’s goals and positions. As a result, Turkey has showed itself to be an unfailingly loyal ally to Azerbaijan, which is further reenforced by a threatening narrative that has emerged in Turkey that southern Armenia lies in the way of Turkey’s connection to the Turkic world.
Can the EU and Turkey cooperate on the South Caucasus?
Despite its unequivocal support for Baku, further military escalation in the South Caucasus would not be in Ankara’s interest. A military intervention by Azerbaijan into Armenia is considered a redline by Iran, and, were it to occur, a broader regional conflict – potentially involving Turkey itself – might ensue. For Ankara, a stable South Caucasus provides a valuable connection to Central Asia, which is its ultimate goal.
The EU served as a facilitator between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan after the ceasefire of 2020. However, the September military offensive exposed the shortcomings of Brussels’ diplomatic leverage: it is unable to provide security guarantees to Yerevan – where Moscow remains the main military power – nor does it have enough influence over Baku to insist on diplomatic rather than military solutions. Moreover, the recent suggestion by Azerbaijan’s President to hold peace talks between his country and Armenia in Tbilisi – with mediation by Georgia, rather than the EU, the US, or Russia – indicate an ambition to resolve issues ‘regionally’ or one-on-one (the latter would effectively mean forcing Armenia to concede to its demands).
However, in order to serve as a force for sustainable conflict resolution in the region and prevent further military escalation, the EU could engage with Turkey to draw on its backdoor channels with Azerbaijan. Additional fighting, with the potential to turn into a broader regional confrontation, is in the interest of neither Ankara nor Brussels.
Marylia Hushcha is a Research Assistant at the International Institute for Peace in Vienna and is a board member of Think Tank Ponto. She previously worked at Pontis Foundation in Slovakia, where she managed a capacity-building project for NGOs in Russia. Marylia has completed training and fellowship programmes at the United Nations Office in Belarus, the European Academy of Diplomacy in Warsaw, and the University of San Diego. She holds a Master’s degree in European Studies from Comenius University in Bratislava.