Defense cooperation between Serbia and Turkey as an indicator of the implementation of Davutoglu’s “Strategic Depth”

Abstract

The paper analyzes the level of compatibility of the defense cooperation between Serbia and Turkey from 2004 to 2014 with the concept of Ahmet Davutoglu’s foreign policy presented in his book “Strategic Depth”. The article mainly uses the comparative method to compare the level of defense cooperation between Turkey and Serbia, as well as Turkey and “Kosovo”. The same method is also used to compare the perceived level of defense cooperation with Davutoglu’s ideas presented in the afore-mentioned book. In doing so, the following is emphasized as comparative areas: the contractual basis of the defense cooperation, high-level bilateral visits, and specific activities within the framework of the cooperation in the area of defense. Qualitative analysis of documents was used to collect data from the official websites of the Ministry of Defense of Serbia, certain institutions of the Serbian Armed Forces, the Ministry for the Kosovo Security Forces, as well as Davutoglu’s book. The author has found that during the said period Turkey intensively supported the development of the defense sector of “Kosovo”, while its cooperation with Serbia was limited to activities of more political than military nature, which completely coincides with the ideas of “Strategic Depth”. He concludes that in the future period the defense cooperation between Belgrade and Ankara will continue to develop primarily towards bilateral relations at the political level, emphasizing the election of Davutoglu as the Turkish Prime Minister, and Erdogan as the Turkish President, to be aggravating circumstances, along with the crisis of trilateral cooperation between Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkey as the dominant framework of Serbian-Turkish political communication. On the other hand, the cooperation between Ankara and Pristina will most likely continue at the same or even more intense pace, considering that there are no major obstacles to its development.