Russia’s Middle East Policy: Relations with Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia (1991- 2016)

The Middle East has been one of the most important living areas of the world throughout history. From the beginning of time until now, which means Since ancient emperors’ era to the modern ages, which is called the nation-state era or the Westphalian system era, there has always been great conflicts for controlling the Middle East. The scope of the crisis is as much as we can call the middle East the permanent center of crisis. A center that the conflicts and wars has always been a part of its history and it will always be. Occurring more than half of the wars in the history in the middle East, shows the importance of this area. But the most important matter which caused Russia’s direct presence in the middle East area is related to the events after Arabic revolutions. It can be stated that in this aspect, Syria’s crisis is one of the most serious military interventions of Russia throughout the history. So, this causes researchers to pay more attention than before to the Russian policies toward Middle East. Understanding Russia’s policies toward middle East powers such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are all involved in Syria’s crisis, has recently been an important and key issue in studying the middle East. In this book, Russia’s foreign policies toward the reginal powers, in the years after 1991 (The collapse of the Soviet Union) is the main research topic.