Influence of Great Britain on Turkish Policy in the Transcaucasia and the Middle East

Abstract

The study explores the Turkish-British partnership. The author verifies the thesis, which gained popularity after the beginning of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war in the Russian expert and journalistic community, that the United Kingdom had a significant impact on Türkiye’s foreign policy in order to destabilize the South Caucasus and oust Russia from the region. Some experts hypothesize that London is trying to implement the “Great Turan” project in the post-Soviet space through the hands of Ankara to the detriment of Russian interests. One of the main arguments that Türkiye’s foreign policy is managed from London is the appointment of former ambassador R. Moore, who has close contacts with Turkish President R.T. Erdogan, to the post of head of British Foreign Intelligence, MI6. To test this hypothesis, the author of the article analyzes the trade, financial, political relations between Great Britain and Türkiye, as well as the degree of similarity in their positions regarding the conflicts in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh. The author comes to the conclusion that Great Britain and Türkiye are indeed close allies. This is confirmed by the fact that the British government lobbied Türkiye to join the EU, refrained from interfering in internal affairs, supported R.T. Erdogan during the coup attempt in 2016, and did not criticize Ankara’s pro-Azerbaijani position during the Karabakh conflict. At the same time, the lack of a high level of financial and economic interdependence, Türkiye’s desire to play an independent role in the Middle East and Transcaucasia bypassing NATO, Ankara’s close cooperation with London’s geopolitical adversary Moscow, as well as differences in approaches to the Syrian conflict allow the author to refute the thesis that that Türkiye acts as a “conduit for the interests of Great Britain.”