Turkey and Russia in a Turbulent Middle East and Eurasia: Energy Politics and Regional Security Challenges

This lecture aims to analyse the complex dynamics of Turkish-Russian relations in a volatile regional context, focusing particularly on economic ties, energy politics and regional security challenges. Turkish-Russian relationship sheds light on some interesting issues concerning broader themes in global political economy. First, significant economic interdependence may be generated amongst states with different geopolitical outlooks. Second, growing economic interdependence may co-exist with continued political conflicts and geo-political rivalries as indicated by the limited impact of Crimean and Ukrainian crises on Turkish-Russian relations. An important strategy that emerges is the tendency to compartmentalize economic issues and geo-political rivalries in order to avoid the negative spill-over effects. This facilitates the co-existence of extensive competition with deepening cooperation, as reflected in relations in the field of energy. However, if the divergences over hard security issues deepen further, and intensify in regions considered as critical for Turkey’s core security interests such as the Syrian conflict, it could significantly tamper economic ties as well.

Speaker: Suhnaz Yilmaz, UCLA

Room 219