Russia–Turkey relations

• 1. Introduction

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  Russia-Turkey relations form one of the longest and most turbulent rivalries in modern diplomatic history. For nearly four centuries, from the late 16th to the early 20th century, the Ottoman and Russian empires waged a series of wars against each other so frequent and so consequential that historians count them among the longest-running conflicts between two states in the modern era. And yet, within a generation, those same governments were exchanging gold and weapons in an alliance that reshaped the map of the Middle East. What drives a relationship to swing so dramatically between hostility and cooperation? Why does Turkey today remain the only NATO member that has refused to sanction Russia, even after years of full-scale war in Ukraine? And how did a centuries-long imperial rivalry give way to a multibillion-dollar gas pipeline and a shared nuclear power plant? The answers lie in the Black Sea, in the Turkish Straits, and in the peculiar logic of a relationship where geography makes enemies, and economics makes partners.

• 2. The Long War Over Water

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  Peter the Great seized the fortress of Azov from the Ottomans in 1696, and that single act set the template for two more centuries of conflict. Russia needed warm-water access. The Ottomans controlled it. Starting in 1549, Ottoman support for smaller Turkic and Islamic states inside what is now Russia, including the Astrakhan Khanate and the Crimean Khanate, pulled the two empires into collision. The Black Sea was Ottoman territory when Russia began pushing south.

  The Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774 ended with the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774, which gave Russia something of enormous consequence: the right to navigate the Black Sea and, by extension, access to the Mediterranean. That same treaty granted Russia the privilege to intervene in Ottoman affairs on behalf of Eastern Orthodox Christian populations. It was a legal wedge, and Russia used it.

  By the 19th century, Russia was actively encouraging the Ottoman Empire's Slavic and Christian minorities to rebel. The calculus was complicated. Russia feared that destroying the Ottomans outright would hand the Balkans to Austria, which was also Orthodox territory Russia preferred to influence rather than cede. Still, the pull of Pan-Slavic sentiment at home and the desire for free passage through the Turkish Straits eventually overrode caution, driving Russia toward decisive military intervention in 1877-78.

  Even the chaos of the Napoleonic Wars produced a short-lived reversal. Russia and the Ottomans signed a mutual defense agreement on the 3rd of January 1799 aimed at blocking French expansion in the region. Their cooperation helped end French control over the Ionian Islands and led to the establishment of the Septinsular Republic under joint Russian and Ottoman protectorate, a rare instance of Greek self-governance since the Byzantine era. But the alliance collapsed after France defeated Russia in the War of the Third Coalition. Sultan Selim III refused to ratify a renewed treaty in 1805, and by 1806 the two powers were at war again.

• 3. Revolutionary Solidarity

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  Vladimir Lenin's government made a strategic calculation in 1920 that transformed the region's political landscape. The Bolsheviks, fresh from winning the Russian Civil War by 1921, saw Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Turkish nationalist movement as ideologically congenial and geopolitically useful. Both governments were outsiders to the postwar order. Both defined themselves as anti-imperialist. And so a four-century rivalry between imperial predecessors was, in the words of scholar Onur Işçi, "laid to rest."

  Soviet gold and weapons flowed to the Kemalists between 1920 and 1922, and they proved decisive. The Kemalists survived, won the Armenian campaign of 1920, and prevailed in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922. Lenin's government reciprocated by formally abandoning the Russian Empire's claims to Western Armenia and the Turkish Straits. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became one of the first states to formally recognize the Kemalist government, doing so in March 1921.

  The Treaty of Moscow, signed on the 16th of March 1921, spelled out the new arrangement in detail. Under Article II, Turkey ceded Batum and adjacent territory to the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic; Kars Oblast went to Turkey. Article III created an autonomous Nakhchivan oblast under Soviet Azerbaijan's protectorate. The status of the Turkish Straits themselves was deferred to a future conference of the littoral states, provided Turkey's sovereignty and the security of Constantinople were respected. A parallel Treaty of Kars, signed in October 1921, bound the Kemalists to the new Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

  When Turkey lost a 1925 diplomatic dispute over Mosul to Britain at the League of Nations, Kemal responded the very next day, on the 17th of December, by signing a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. That pact was extended and then extended again, remaining in force until November 1935. The culmination of this cooperative period came in July 1936, when the Montreux Convention restored Turkish sovereignty over the Straits and gave Turkey the right to remilitarize them.

• 4. The Cold War Break

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  On the 19th of March 1945, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov summoned Turkey's ambassador to Moscow and announced that the Soviet Union was withdrawing unilaterally from the 1925 Non-Aggression Pact. The explanation given was that the treaty no longer fit what Molotov described as "the new situation" created by World War II. Turkey had officially remained neutral until the 23rd of February 1945, but the Soviets had watched Turkish neutrality with deep suspicion. Nazi warships had been permitted through the Straits; the relationship between Ankara and Berlin was seen in Moscow as inimical to Soviet interests.

  Molotov went further. He told Turkey's ambassador that the Soviet Union now claimed a portion of eastern Turkey, understood to refer to the districts of Kars, Artvin, and Ardahan, territories the Russian Empire had held between 1878 and 1921. At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, Joseph Stalin demanded revision of the Montreux Convention and the right to join in the defense of the Straits. Turkey refused, backed by the Western powers.

  The Truman Doctrine, proclaimed in March 1947, put the weight of the United States behind Turkey's borders. Turkey joined NATO in 1952. The Soviet Union renounced its territorial claims after Stalin's death in 1953, and relations began a slow thaw. But the fundamental alignment of Turkey with the Western alliance and the Soviet Union's Cold War posture meant the two countries remained on opposite sides of nearly every major international dispute through the 1980s.

• 5. Trade, Energy, and Tourism

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  After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the bilateral dynamic shifted faster than most observers expected. On the 25th of May 1992, Turkish Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel visited Moscow and signed a new Russian-Turkish treaty. By the 1990s, Turkey had become the top foreign destination for Russian tourists, and Russian companies and Turkish companies had each begun operating in the other's territory. Russia grew into Turkey's largest energy supplier.

  The economic integration deepened with two landmark infrastructure projects. In May 2010, Russia and Turkey signed a Cooperation Agreement for the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, planned for the southern coast of Turkey in Mersin province, comprising four power units with VVER-1200 reactors totaling a capacity of 4,800 MW. It is designed to become Turkey's first fully operational nuclear facility. An intergovernmental agreement for the TurkStream gas pipeline followed in October 2016; construction began in May 2017, and gas began flowing to Bulgaria on the 1st of January 2020.

  By 2022, Turkey received almost half of its gas from Russia, a dependency that shaped Erdoğan's refusal to join international sanctions after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Erdoğan and Putin had discussed turning Turkey into an energy hub for Europe, a plan described by senior energy journalist Aura Săbăduș as one that would allow Turkey to accumulate gas from Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan, then relabel it as Turkish gas, obscuring its origin for European buyers.

  The economic ties also tracked through opinion polling. A November 2018 survey found 51 percent of Turks viewed Russia favorably. A 2022 Levada Center poll found 68 percent of Russians held a positive attitude toward Turkey. Against that backdrop of popular goodwill and deep trade interdependence, even severe diplomatic crises proved difficult to sustain.

• 6. The Jet Shootdown

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  On the 24th of November 2015, within weeks of Russia's military intervention in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish F-16 aircraft shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 during an airspace dispute close to the Turkish-Syrian border. Vladimir Putin called the incident "a stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists" and warned of "significant consequences" for bilateral relations.

  Russia's response was swift and deliberately targeted at the economic relationship both sides had built. Moscow suspended visa-free travel for Turkish citizens, restricted Turkish businesses operating in Russia, curtailed imports of Turkish products, pressured tour operators to stop selling Turkish package holidays, halted charter flights, and banned Russian football clubs from signing Turkish players or holding winter training camps in Turkey. A Russian lawmaker named Sergei Mironov introduced a bill to criminalize denial of the Armenian genocide, a politically charged move given Turkey's long-standing opposition to such laws in France and Greece.

  The crisis also disrupted Orthodox ecclesiastical planning. The Pan-Orthodox Council, originally scheduled to be held at Hagia Irene in Istanbul in 2016, was relocated to Crete after the Russian Orthodox Church said it would not travel to Turkey while the diplomatic rift persisted.

  Normalisation began in June 2016, when Erdoğan expressed regret to Putin for the downing of the plane. Putin and Erdoğan spoke by telephone on the 29th of June; both governments described the conversation as productive. On the 9th of August 2016, the two leaders met in Saint Petersburg in what a commentator described as a "clear-the-air summit." It was also Erdoğan's first trip abroad after the 2016 Turkish coup attempt, and at the summit Erdoğan thanked Putin for his swift support during those events. By May 2017, Russia lifted most of the remaining sanctions, restored visa-free movement, and ended restrictions on Turkish companies and workers.

• 7. Ukraine and the Balancing Act

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  When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022, Erdoğan expressed support for Ukraine but abstained from the Council of Europe vote on Russia's suspension. On the 27th of February, Turkey invoked the 1936 Montreux Convention, announcing it would prohibit warships of belligerent forces, including Russia's navy, from transiting the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. Erdoğan confirmed the Straits closure publicly on the 28th of February, while simultaneously pledging to maintain relations with both sides.

  Turkey positioned itself as the indispensable mediator. Ukraine had provided Turkish defense company Bayraktar with customers before the war; Ukraine had been buying Bayraktar drones since 2019, and those drones played a significant role in the early stages of resisting Russian advances. On the 10th of March 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met in person in Antalya, Turkey, on the sidelines of a major diplomatic forum, in what was described as the first high-level contact between the two sides since the start of the conflict. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu participated and said the meeting aimed to pave the way for a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents.

  On the 22nd of July 2022, Russia and Ukraine signed a deal in Istanbul allowing grain exports from Ukrainian Black Sea ports. A coalition of Turkish, Ukrainian, and United Nations staff was assigned to monitor grain loading to address Russian concerns about weapons smuggling. Russia suspended its participation on the 29th of October 2022, citing a Ukrainian drone attack on its Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol, but resumed two days later on the 2nd of November.

  Turkey remained the only NATO member state that had not imposed sanctions on Russia even after four years of full-scale invasion and occupation. In 2024, Washington sent Assistant Commerce Secretary Matthew Axelrod to Ankara to press Turkey to halt transshipment of American-origin military-linked components to Russia. U.S. officials warned of what they described as a "ghost trade," in which Turkey's exports of such goods rose without a corresponding increase in recorded imports at their destination. On the 22nd of October 2025, the United States imposed sanctions on Russia's largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, and threatened secondary sanctions on foreign firms doing business with them, a warning that would directly affect their customers in Turkey.