Russian and Turkish societies in the 21st century have inherited historically negative and competitive discourses, hailing from long periods of conflict and competition. To be sure, their imperial struggles left a complex and problematic demographic structure across a vast geography from the Balkans to Central Asia, where long shadows of forced migrations and violent exchanges set the stage for more competition and conflict.
This long-lasting imperial legacy was later solidified by the Cold War era ideological struggle, which left a complex and problematic geopolitical environment across their common neighborhoods and a persistent distrust and negative discourse in the post-imperial era. Added to these have been more recent experiences of intense competition across Eurasia during the 1990s for energy and influence. Some of these negative images inherited from earlier eras have been mollified and overturned by the positive turn in the relations in the 2000s. Nevertheless, recent political developments in the international arena, technological transformations, and the current nature of competition/warfare in their shared neighborhood brought new dimensions to the existing, primarily negative, perceptions. This study examines these persistent perceptions and views of the two neighboring countries in the light of historical transformations.
