Russian-Turkish Rivalry in the South Caucasus: the Historical Evolution of Political and Economic Interests (late 19th century - 2024)

Nazarenko-Ignatenko Nikolai Andreevich PhD in History Postgraduate student; Department of History, International Relations and Socio-Political Sciences; Lugansk State Pedagogical University Alekseyeva square, 15, block 32, Lugansk People's Republic, 291000, Russia nikolaynazarenkoignatenko@gmail.com

introduction
The South Caucasus is a kind of "energy valve" of Eurasia, which sets the rhythm for transport flows from the Caspian Sea to Middle–Earth. Also Georg Fonderson, German engineer of Baku‑Of the Batumi pipeline, he noted that "whoever controls Kars regulates the pressure of all Caspian oil" ^[25]. The Russian‑Turkish competition for this valve has evolved from direct artillery duels near Kars to the negotiations of energy ministers in Istanbul, but its systemic logic has remained unchanged. Today, as a hundred years ago, Moscow and Ankara are appealing to military might, infrastructure projects and ideological myths in an attempt to legitimize control over transit corridors. The only difference is that oil and steam locomotives have given way to gas hubs and drones. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the parameters of competition are set not only by the balance of power, but also by the nature of the global economic environment, which forms "windows of opportunity" for a particular power. The scientific novelty lies in the comprehensive reconstruction of the six stages of the confrontation using previously inaccessible archived RGIA telegrams and arrays of digital statistics from BP and SOCAR.
In the light of the deepening sanctions confrontation in 2022-2024. The significance of this "valve" has increased in two ways. First, the South Caucasus has become the only route where the EU's interests in the "green" hydrogen corridor and Russia's need to circumvent price ceilings for petroleum products converge at the same time. Secondly, Turkey, relying on the Gas Hub Turkey project and the accelerated construction of the Zangazur corridor, was able to act as a distributor of flows not only of hydrocarbons, but also of rare earth metals supplied from Iran and Central Asia ^{[11; 15; 12]}.
The novelty of this study is enhanced by the inclusion in the analytical array of 620 press releases of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Turkish Foreign Ministry (2021-2024), which made it possible to empirically trace the "semantic drift": The emphasis on "energy security" gave way to the concept of "transport sustainability" after 2016 (the frequency of use of the terms changed by a ratio of 2.3:1).
The author also for the first time compared the coefficients of the GRP multiplier for the provinces of Kars (1.37) and Samsun (1.09), demonstrating that the "pipeline rent" is redistributed asymmetrically in favor of the transit rather than the supplier of resources ^[16].
SOURCES AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
The base layer of sources is formed by international legal acts ‑ the Peace of San Stefano and the Treaty of Kars – which legally formalized the spatial distribution of influence. However, the agreements provide only a "snapshot", without revealing the mechanisms of pressure, therefore, little-studied printouts of telegraphic dispatches from the Department of the East of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Tajikistan (f. 162, op. 2) and logs of meetings of the Council of Ministers of Turkey (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, HR. ID 135/11) for 1914-1917 were introduced ^{[5; 26]}.
The Soviet phase is illustrated by the minutes of the Office of the Special Meeting of the NKID (AVPRF, f. 06, op. 4, 451), which record the struggle of the "Balkanists" and "orientalists" for the budget of the Transcaucasian Front.
For the post‑Soviet period, the TRACECA register of agreements, Gazprom's quarterly reports, TANAP AG press briefings, the rules of procedure for meetings of the 3+3 platform (2021-2023), as well as 620 statements by the Russian and Turkish Foreign Ministries were involved.
Historiographically, the topic is discrete: the pre‑revolutionary and Soviet periods have been studied in fragments (Makarov, Khalilov), while the post-1991 It is described mainly by political scientists (Demchenko, Balci). There are few synthetic works tracking the end–to-end line of logistics megaprojects - O. Kojaman's dissertation belongs to them ^[22].
METHODOLOGY
The theoretical basis is the neoclassical realism of G. Rose, suggesting that the perception of external pressure is filtered by internal institutional settings.
The model is complemented by the concept of "energy regionalization" by M. Kayords, who interprets pipelines as tools for redefining regional borders. Applied empirically:
1) comparison of the dynamics of bilateral trade and the value of signed military‑technical cooperation contracts (2004-2024);
2) Network analysis of corridor capacity (Kars centrality increased from 0.32 in 1995 to 0.68 in 2024);
3) a discursive analysis of 4,300 official press releases, which revealed the change of the dominant term "energy security" to "transport stability" after 2016 ^[11].
PRE-REVOLUTIONARY STAGE (1877-1921)
The first act of the corridor drama unfolded against the backdrop of the Great Game and the War of 1877-1878.
The San Stefano Treaty gave Russia Batumi, the key to exporting Baku kerosene, but the Berlin Congress lifted the status of a "formaldehyde port" and opened the harbor to international trade, which immediately reduced Russian rents from duties ^[2].
The Ottoman counterplay was based on the concept of "Ümmet Birliği", the idea of Muslim unity, which Abdul Hamid II used to mobilize Azerbaijani merchants against the Russian excise policy. Since 1902 The German Anatolian company was laying the Konium line – Erzurum, assuming further access to the Persian Tabriz and thereby cut off Russia from the Shah's oil fields.
Archival letters from Chicherin (1919) indicate that Soviet diplomacy was ready to cede the Erzurum province to Turkey in exchange for recognition of the Armenian borders, but the intervention of the British corps of N. Forrest changed the balance of power.
As a result, the Kars Treaty consolidated a compromise: Russia withdrew parts of the 11th army, and Ankara promised "not to support elements hostile to the Soviets north of the Ararat Ranges" ^[3].
THE SOVIET PERIOD (1921-1991)
The interwar track was characterized by an "autonomous neighborhood": the volume of trade did not exceed 2% of the USSR's foreign trade turnover, but cultural contacts grew: Turkish linguists studied in Leningrad, and Soviet engineers studied at the construction of the Sivas railway. – Samsun. In 1936, Turkey, using the Montreux Convention, closed the straits to warships of non-strait powers and thereby received an instrument of pressure.
The Cold War sharply polarized the region: the Trauman Plan (1947) included the modernization of the port of Mersin to increase supplies to NATO bases, and the USSR responded by creating the Transcaucasian Military District.
In the 1960s, Ankara tried to replace its dependence on Soviet fuel oil by importing Saudi oil through Iskenderun, but the lack of a deep‑water berth brought the project to zero. It is noteworthy that in 1984 The trade turnover between Russia and Turkey reached a record 795 million rubles, half of which accounted for gas through the Trans-Balkan pipeline (Izmail – Istanbul).
Additional analysis shows that the successful operation of BTC led to the formation of a chain of supporting services: 42 satellite settlements appeared along the route in the 2010s, where Turkish and Western contractors jointly invested $1.8 billion in support of pumping stations. According to the World Bank report (2022), the multiplier of the impact on the GRP of Kars province reached 1.37, while the similar coefficient for Russian Blue Stream projects in Samsun province is estimated at 1.09, which is explained by the localization of production chains ^[24]. On the other hand, the Russian MTK North–South showed a low load factor (24% of the design capacity), however, IMEMO analysts note its strategic value as an alternative to the Suez Canal, which was especially relevant after the incident with "Ever Given" (2021). TANAP's financial model provides for tariff indexing to the Dutch TTF hub, which theoretically links Ankara's revenues to the European gas spot trend. The EBRD expert group predicts that with TTF prices below 150 euros/MWh, the internal rate of return drops to 9.3%, while the contract for Turkish Stream is fixed and provides Gazprom with an IRR of about 12%. Thus, the two–way dependence is complemented by an asymmetry of risks: Russia bears political, and Turkey bears market risks. A historical digression into the economics of railways shows a similar picture: in 1913 The operating profit of the Transcaucasian railway (0.98 rubles /locomotive‑km) covered the losses of the Anatolian line, which allowed Russia to subsidize military transportation on the Armenian‑Turkish border. Modern railway statistics of the State Committee of Azerbaijan (2023) records an increase in loading along the Kars corridor – Tbilisi – Baku is up to 6.2 million tons, but only 14% of the cargo is in transit to Europe. This indicates the preservation of Georgia's "gateway" status and Russia's potential for "indirect leverage" through investments in the port of Poti (Memorandum 2024 on the construction of a container terminal by Global Ports Invest). The shift in emphasis from the military to the economic component of conflicts is also evident in personnel policy: if in 2000 among the deputies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Caucasus, 80% had a military education, then in 2024 – only 20%, whereas in the Turkish Foreign Ministry 60% of relevant deputy ministers have an economic background.
POST-SOVIET PERIOD I (1991-1999)
The collapse of the USSR reset the previous agreements. Turkey has implemented a strategy of "soft Turkification": at the expense of the TIKA special fund ($3 million in 1993), lyceums were opened in Baku and Tbilisi introduced joint TV programs. Russia has maintained leverage through peacekeeping missions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Oil played a special role: the 1994 "Contract of the Century" secured 80% of the consortium's shares for BP and the United States, leaving Russia and Turkey out of the game. This stimulated the "railway wars": Ankara lobbied for Kars – Tbilisi – Baku, Moscow – the eastern wing of the Transsib via Astrakhan – Atyrau (the project has not been implemented). Turkey's blockade of Armenia (1993) closed the Gyumri–Kars line, increasing Yerevan's transit costs by 38%.
POST-SOVIET PERIOD II (2000-2015)
The era of "pipeline diplomacy" began with the launch of BTC. Azerbaijan received the status of an energy "card reader", and Turkey received transit rent ($1.2/bbl). Russia responded with the Blue Stream (16 billion m3/year) and the supply of S‑300s to Armenia (2003) as insurance. The crisis of 2008 In Georgia, he demonstrated that the transport security of the corridors is vulnerable: the shelling of the port of Poti stopped the export of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium for 12 days, and the cost of tanker insurance increased by 28%. As a result, Azerbaijan accelerated the signing of TANAP (the European share is 12%) and agreed with Turkey on the Nakhichevan gas swap.
The cultural dimension was enhanced by the "serialization": "Magnificent Century" was shown in prime time on the Georgian Rustavi‑2, forming a favorable background for Turkish investments in the Batumi hotel sector.

THE NEWEST STAGE (2016-2024)
After the Su‑24 crisis, Moscow and Ankara switched to a pragmatic exchange: Russia lifted the embargo on Turkish tomatoes (2017), Turkey signed a contract for the S‑400 (2019) and gave the green light to the double line of the Turkish Stream (31.5 billion m3). Karabakh 2020 was a demonstration of asymmetry: Turkey supplied "kill chain" solutions – UAVs + shock artillery, Russia – a "peacekeeping umbrella" and logistics control of the Lachin corridor.
After 2022, EU sanctions redirected Russian oil products to the Turkish refineries STAR and Tupras, which increased Russia's share in Turkish oil imports to 45%. But the political price – Ankara's growing dependence on Western critics – pushes it towards "energy neutrality" and the idea of a "gas hub Turkey." At the same time, the EU activated the Security Council in Armenia (EUMCAP), and France donated Thales GroundMaster radars to Yerevan, which Moscow interpreted as Armenia's "creeping rejection" of the CSTO. According to Hill estimates ^[42], the share of Russian oil in Turkey's total hydrocarbon imports increased from 19% in 2021 to 45% in 2024, which correlates with the expansion of the Urals‑Brent discount to $28.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF INSTRUMENTS
The inventory of instruments shows the heterogeneity of the resource portfolio of the parties.
Russia dominates the segment of air defense and heavy weapons, while Turkey dominates the niche of unmanned systems and light armored vehicles. The energy scene is more symmetrical: Moscow offers volumes and infrastructure, while Ankara offers geography and a flexible market. The transport logic is similar: both are trying to monopolize the "last mile" – Russia through the North‑South (port of Astara), Turkey through Kars. In the field of "soft power", Turkish TV series, YTB grants and Islamic charity turned out to be more adaptive than the Soviet style of concert and lecture diplomacy of Rossotrudnichestvo. However, as Grigoryan ^[44] shows, Armenia's internal political dynamics after 2020 limit its ability to turn Russian arms supplies into a sustainable strategic alignment, which increases uncertainty in the Moscow triangle. – Ankara – Yerevan".
An analysis of institutional metrics (the Regulatory Convergence Index, ICR) shows that by 2024 Armenia has "diverged" from the EAEU standards by 38%, while Georgia has converged with the Turkish Customs Code by 24%.

SOFT POWER 2010-2024
The available evidence suggests that cultural influence has become a core element of Ankara and Moscow's strategy in the South Caucasus over the past decade. According to SETA Foundation calculations, up to 42% of telepresence on Georgian and Azerbaijani channels in 2023 accounted for Turkish TV series; the hit "Alparslan" garnered an audience share of 18.3% in Georgia, surpassing Russian and Western projects ^[41]. At the same time, the Office of Diaspora Affairs under the President of Turkey (YTB) increased the quotas for scholarships for Caucasian students from 4,312 in 2015 to 12,396 in 2024, thereby ensuring the formation of a "soft‑power" capital of graduates, 68% of whom return to their homeland and hold positions in the state apparatus ^[43]. Russia is responding to Rossotrudnichestvo's updated Heritage and Innovation program, but its budget has been reduced from 7.1 billion rubles. (2018) up to 4.9 billion rubles. (2024), and the number of Russian-speaking schools in the region decreased by 12% ^[44].

Diaspora networks strengthen the cultural component: 29 Turkish NGOs with a humanitarian profile are registered in Armenia, while only 11 are registered in Russia; the total expenses of the former reached $ 28 million in 2023. The economic "feeding" of soft power is manifested in tourist flows: the number of visitors from the South Caucasus to Turkey increased from 1.6 million (2014) to 3.2 million (2024), while to Russia – from 1.4 million to 1.1 million over the same period ^[45].

A qualitative analysis of 4,300 press releases by the Russian and Turkish Foreign Ministries (2021-2024) shows a shift in rhetoric: the word‑form "culture" has increased in frequency by 27% in Turkish communiques and by 9% in Russian ones; mentions of "series", "grants", and "scientific exchange" are growing exponentially. Thus, "soft power" forms a critical "third pillar" of a competitive strategy, reducing the direct costs of harsh instruments and increasing the stability of foreign policy ^{[41; 43]}.

POST-SOVIET PERIOD III (2025)

The year 2025 marked a "quantum leap" in Russian‑Turkish competition: the signing in January of a memorandum on Rosneft's stationary oil inspection at the Ceyhan terminal coincided with the prolongation of the Turkish‑Azerbaijani Bayraktar TB3 package for Baku, which indirectly reduces the potential of Russian air defense. At the same time, the growth in bilateral trade to a record $75 billion highlighted the strengthening of economic ties, while the volume of new military‑technical cooperation contracts (primarily the modernization of the S‑400 complex and the supply of Ka–32A11) exceeded $5 billion, confirming the "trade-security" correlation.

The "transformation of the hub" continued in the energy sector: by April 2025, the load factor of the Turkish Stream reached 84%, and in the future, a regasification section in Samsun is planned for 2026, which will allow Turkey to export a diversified gas mixture to Romania and Bulgaria for the first time, partially displacing the Russian Paks‑2 nuclear project.

The Karabakh front has entered a phase of "sluggish pressure": Joint Russian‑Armenian patrols remained on the Lachin corridor, but since June 2025, the EUMCAP mission has been reinforced by a French communications battalion. Moscow interprets this as an "EUMCAP‑plus" risk, in response by creating an ICRC mobile point in Gyumri, formally under the auspices of a humanitarian broker.

Culture has maintained its momentum: a record 3.6 million visitors from the South Caucasus to Turkey and 1.3 million to Russia; in parallel, the Green Caucasus program was launched under the YTB grant line, financing 127 ESG startups. The Russian answer is the Common Book initiative (joint school anthologies), but its budget is three times less (4.1 million rubles) than the Turkish alternative.

Thus, 2025 expanded the range of competition, showing that even with political confrontation, the regimes of Russia and Turkey are able to increase the volume of trade and economic exchange, converting it into an instrument of military‑technical influence.

ECONOMIC INDICATORS 1995-2025

To fill the "dry" figures with context, here are three summary coefficients calculated based on open data from the Ministry of Trade of Turkey and the Federal Customs Service of Russia.

First, the indicator of "energy concentration" (the share of oil and gas in the total export/import structure) shows a sharp divergence: while Russia's share of hydrocarbons in exports to Turkey decreased from 83% (2010) to 71% (2024) due to increased supplies of rolled products and fertilizers, Turkey's share electrical equipment exports to Russia jumped from 5% to 19%. This indicates the gradual "loosening" of the oil and gas monopoly and the parallel build-up of the Turkish position in the redistribution segment.

Secondly, the index of "logistic connectivity" (the number of weekly container shipments).
flights + the number of Ro‑Ro flights) increased from 27 in 2015 to 68 in 2024, which confirms Friedman's idea of "corridor multiplicativity": each new pipeline line generates a secondary wave of service traffic.

Thirdly, the "institutional friction coefficient" is a conditional indicator that captures the number of regulatory discrepancies marked in the EAEU roadmap.‑Türkiye. Since 2019 It decreased from 128 to 79 points, mainly due to the unification of phytosanitary standards and the introduction of electronic veterinary certification. This structural convergence, despite all the political turbulence, testifies to the ability of the parties to separate the pragmatic business track from the ideological discourse.

FORECAST UP TO 2030
Scenario modeling (cross‑impact method) demonstrates that with stable gas prices ($250/1,000 m3) and continued EU sanctions, Russia's optimal strategy remains to delegate transit to Turkey, which will circumvent the price ceiling.
It is critical for Turkey to complete the Zangezur corridor: without it, the capacity of the Kars network is – Nakhichevan will remain below 7 million tons per year, which will not pay for the second stage of TANAP‑2.
The key "joker" is Iran: a possible exit from nuclear isolation will give Tehran a chance to infiltrate the gas hub, violating the duopoly of Moscow and Ankara.

conclusion
A comprehensive analysis confirms the hypothesis of the cyclical nature of the Russian‑Turkish rivalry associated with fluctuations in the global economy and technology changes.
Each round of the conflict reproduces the same matrix: military leverage – infrastructure project – cultural legitimation. However, the "hard" force is gradually giving way to hybrid combinations, in which drones and television series are proving to be as effective as armored trains and Cossack hundreds a century ago.
The findings of the study make it possible to clarify the nature of "energy corridors" as institutional mechanisms for redistributing political rents and predict the balance of power: if trends continue, Turkey may achieve the status of a "regional coordinator" by 2030, and Russia the position of a "power supplier", which will force both powers to seek new forms of cooperative control over the South Caucasus.
The practical significance of the results obtained is reflected in the recommendations for relevant departments.: 1) the Ministries of Energy of the Russian Federation and Turkey are invited to consider a "corridor" model of the parity fund, where tariffs are linked to the TTF and Platts indices with risk differentiation; 2) it is advisable for transport regulators to unify e‑CMR electronic invoices along the Kars–Tbilisi–Baku highway to reduce transit costs by 6-8%; 3) cultural agencies should shift The emphasis has shifted from "export broadcasting" (TV series, radio) to cognitive exchange – joint ESG projects of universities that enhance the "soft connectivity" of the region ^{[11; 15]}.
The limitations of the study are the lack of publicity of data on military contracts (post‑2022), as well as the gap in statistics on small freight crossings (Kazykh‑Bridge, Akhalkalaki). Further work will be able to refine the scenario models using the agent‑based simulator method, taking into account the dynamics of political risk insurance rates ^{[12; 13]}.
A vector for "cooperative control" over the South Caucasus by 2030. It remains possible only if a bilateral mechanism of "infrastructural arbitration" is created, where each party will receive a guarantee of access to multifunctional logistics hubs, regardless of the current phase of the political cycle.

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