The Arctic as a New Domain of Russia – Türkiye Collaboration

Nowadays the significance of the Arctic is growing at a notable pace. Türkiye that strives to cultivate a robust foreign policy sees the region as a new focal point of its policy. Non-Arctic states, however, including Türkiye, do not have the same scope of the rights as Arctic Coastal states. The character of Russia’s involvement is different: as an Arctic Coastal state, with the largest coastline in the Arctic region and a long history of engagement in the region, Russia plays a major role in the region. Like other Arctic Coastal state, it has been and still is determinative in the development of the Arctic marine areas’ legal regime.

At this juncture, the Arctic has prompted preliminary explorations between Russia and Türkiye. The pivotal issues that this study seeks to address is whether the Arctic can serve as a new domain of collaboration between Russia and Türkiye regardless of the NATO and whether scientific and economic areas of cooperation in the Arctic are mutually beneficial for both states.

To address this issue authors analysed the main legal documents of Russia and Türkiye related to their maritime policy in the Arctic. Although Türkiye has not published the Arctic policy yet, its legal position on different aspects of legal regime of the Arctic reflected in national laws and in international agreements to which Türkiye is a party. As a result of the study, the authors defined several possible areas of bilateral cooperation in the Arctic, namely, scientific research, commercial shipbuilding, energy projects. General scientific and private scientific methods of cognition composed methodological basis for the study.

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