Turkey’s geostrategic environment

A key member of NATO during the Cold War, Turkey has been at the centre of a very troubled wider region since the fall of the USSR. These troubles have included international / US operations in Iraq (1991, 2003) and in Afghanistan (since 2001), frozen conflicts in the southern Caucasus (Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia), the Arab-Israeli conflict and, more recently, civil war in Syria, the Russian annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine. This has shed doubt on the ability of any democracy to survive in such an international environment and not be affected by it internally. The regional difficulties have also had a direct impact on Turkey owing to continuous migrations from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria over the past decade. In the last three years, Turkey’s official policy of ‘zero problems with neighbours’ seems to have turned into a situation of ‘many neighbours with problems’.