The Last Century in Turkish-Polish Relations (1923-2023)
Poland in Ottoman and Turkish Grand Strategy: The Puzzle of an Enduring Alliance over Six Centuries
In previous works, I described Poland as a natural ally of Türkiye. The appearance of a stable and enduring Polish-Turkish alliance through the centuries poses an intriguing puzzle for strategic studies in particular and for international relations scholarship more generally. Given the assumption that national interests, geopolitical balance, and international norms often change in radically different directions, it is a puzzle as to how and why Polish-Turkish alliance could be sustained over the centuries with very few bouts of conflict. I argue that primarily geopolitical factors but also identity-related factors contributed to the development of strikingly compatible Polish and Turkish geopolitical identities as “third powers” over the centuries. First and foremost, the geopolitical actors that threatened the survival of Polish-Lithuanian and Ottoman-Turkish polities remained strikingly similar over the centuries. Most importantly, Russia remained the archenemy of the Ottoman Empire, post-Ottoman Türkiye, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and interwar Poland, at least until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has resurged as a major threat especially since 2014 (Russia’s occupation and annexation of Crimea). However, both Poland and Türkiye have also been threatened and even occupied by Western European actors (e.g., Prussia and the Habsburgs for Poland; British and French Empires for the Ottomans and Türkiye), thus making them natural allies militarily threatened by both Russia and the Western European powers throughout the centuries. Moroever, their legacies of religious toleration and autonomous trajectories within Christendom and Islamicate also facilitated the two polities’ amicable relations. As a corollary of these geopolitical and identity-related factors, there are chronological parallels in the rise, the fall, and the revival of Polish-Lithuanian and Ottoman-Turkish polities from the 15th to the 21st centuries.
