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NATO’s Southeast: Turkey, Russia and the Southern Caucasus
Michael B. Bishku, Ph.D., Augusta State University
International Studies Association Annual Meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii
March 3, 2005
Introduction
For most of its history, the Ottoman Empire devoted much attention in foreign
relations with the Russian Empire as did the Turkish Republic afterwards to the Soviet
Union. While Turkey and post-Soviet Russia no longer share a common border or the
tensions of the Cold War, their relations have become somewhat more complicated with
the emergence more than a decade ago of three independent states in the Transcaucasus –
Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – in which they both have varying degrees of interest.
These countries of what Russia calls the “near abroad” are all members of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – although Georgia refused to join until
October 1993, while Azerbaijan withdrew from October 1992 to September 1993.
Orthodox Christian Armenia, the smallest state in Transcaucasia and the only one of the
three that does not share a border with Russia, has the closest ties with Moscow as well as
Russian troops stationed on its borders with Turkey and Iran; its president, Robert
Kocharian, just like his counterpart in Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, are not former
Communist officials, but Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, is the son of one.
Turkey and Armenia distrust one another because of previous history. During the
latter years of the Ottoman Empire, its eastern provinces became the scene of massive
deportations and killings of Armenians, whose population’s loyalty was regarded with
suspicion by authorities; several decades later, during the mid-1970s and through the
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