Turkey and Montenegro: Old Foes Turned Partners

Abstract

While for many Balkan and Middle Eastern nations a cornerstone of nation-building was the centuries-long resistance to the Ottomans, nowhere was this process as significant as in Montenegro. The whole history of the nation between the mid-fifteenth century and 1913 was represented as a permanent struggle against the Ottoman invaders, which was the driving force behind the state-building movement and the unification of the country. The glorification of battlefield victories of this small nation in the mountains, against the great empire, was also celebrated in the national epic The Mountain Wreath, and this attitude continued well into the twenty-first century. There was not much space for closer ties between the two nations during the 1990s, when Montenegro remained in its union with Serbia, while Turkey, on the other hand, was seen as an ally of the Bosnian Muslims in the Yugoslav wars. However, significant changes in Turkey (notably the coming of the Justice and Development Party [AKP] to power), Montenegro (the split in the ruling party and reversal of both domestic and foreign policies), and in the wider region (democratic reforms, along with the (re)emergence of the presence of non-Western actors, notably Russia and China, as well as Turkey) opened the way for a new beginning in the relationship between Turkey and Montenegro, following its independence in 2006.