Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had reasons to be pleased after his recent Balkan tour. Visiting Albania on Oct. 10, 2024, Erdoğan promised to donate an unspecified number of kamikaze drones to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and the two leaders jointly opened the largest mosque in the Balkans. The next day, Erdoğan visited Belgrade, where he and his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vučić discussed military cooperation, including a likely drone program. 

Ankara’s post–Cold War engagement with the Balkans, particularly Serbs and Albanians, has followed a twisting path. During the Yugoslav Wars, Turkey’s relations with Serbs tended toward the adversarial, while Albanians received Ankara’s cautious support. Following Erdoğan’s rise to power in the 2000s, Turkey leaned into its partnership with Albanians amidst a great deal of historical and religious rhetoric. Turkey also tried to engage Serbia during this time, but Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman references alienated the Serbs and derailed Ankara’s Balkan policies. Since 2017, however, Erdoğan’s more personalized approach has enabled Ankara to act more successfully as a broker and balancer among various Balkan players. 

Erdoğan’s dual visits this past month demonstrate not only that Turkey has become more active in Balkan security affairs but also that it has been successful in balancing its relations with both Serbs and Albanians — the region’s two most influential ethnic groups in Ankara’s eyes. This policy has been executed through a series of Turkish overtures toward Serbs — principly Serbia but also the Republika Srpska — and Albanians in both Albania and Kosovo. Now, Erdoğan’s transactional dealings have enabled him to engage leaders of both groups without fully alienating the other.

Ankara Joins the Game

Turkish support for the Bosnian Muslims during the Bosnian Civil War (1992–95), alongside the emergence of Turkic post-Soviet republics in Central Asia, demonstrated a newfound engagement in Eurasia after the constraints imposed by the Cold War. Still, Turkey maintained a cautious attitude toward the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) because it was a key corridor for Turkish trade with Europe. Ankara also took a more cautious approach toward the Kosovo War (1998–99) both because Ankara feared Kosovo could present a precedent for Kurdistan and because of concerns over the Turkish minority in Kosovo. During this period, Ankara made minor diplomatic overtures to Belgrade in order to defuse the crisis before eventually joining in military operations against Serbia as a member of NATO. To this very day, Turkey participates in NATO’s Kosovo Force mission in Kosovo, with 325 troops in Camp Sultan Murat in Prizren. 

Turkey’s strategy toward the Balkans began to change during the era of Ahmet Davutoğlu, who served as foreign policy advisor to Erdoğan in the 2000s before rising to become foreign minister. Davutoğlu believed that if Turkey was to become a major player in the new post–Cold War world, it had to reestablish strategic presence in regions that used to be Ottoman provinces, including the Balkans. His approach involved forming a partnership with Muslim communities in the Balkans, primarily Bosniaks and Albanians, to avoid being outmaneuvered by Greeks and Russians. In this light, it also involved engagement with countries like majority-Orthodox North Macedonia, which was locked in a running dispute with Greece.

Indeed, beyond Davutoğlu’s romantic invocation of Ottoman history, Ankara had other interests in the region that transcend any change in leadership. For Turkey, the region is a key geopolitical and economic terms link to Europe. Moreover, every security crisis since the First Balkan War of 1912 has led to the influx of the Balkan population into Turkey. At the same time, Davutoğlu himself argued that if Turkey is to be an influential player in the Middle East and wider Eurasia, it needs a stable European flank, with a defensive perimeter and zone of influence in the Balkans. This leaves Turkey with an abiding strategic interest in having a stake in regional security affairs. 

Ankara perceives Serbs and Albanians as being the two most consequential ethnic groups in the Balkans that inhabit several countries in the region, forcing Ankara to keep an open door in Belgrade. Turkey launched a trilateral mechanism to address the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2010, gathering Turkey, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as a similar meeting involving Croatia. Ankara also tried to mediate a dispute between two Islamic communities in Serbia. However, Turkish Balkan policy experienced a major setback when, in 2013, Erdoğan bombastically told a crowd in Prizren, “Do not forget, Turkey is Kosovo, Kosovo is Turkey!” Serbia responded by pulling out of Ankara’s trilateral initiative, thereby ending Turkish mediation efforts and showing how Turkey’s Ottoman-infused nationalist rhetoric could alienate Christian nations in the Balkans.

In 2016, Davutoğlu was forced to step down from power, leading to a more personalized, pragmatic, and transactional approach under Erdoğan. In October 2017, Erdoğan visited Belgrade as part of an effort to repair relations with Serbia. Interest in repairing ties was strong on both sides. Turkey needed a respite from its failed Syrian policy, and new partners in light of the fact that its ties with the West were damaged and relations with Russia improved. At the same time, Serbia’s multivector foreign policy meant Belgrade was always on the lookout for new diplomatic and economic partners. Turkey’s tensions with the West and improved ties with Russia made Turkey acceptable for nationalists in Serbia, who also saw Turkey’s importance as a transit corridor for Russian gas and migrations from the Middle East. Moreover, for Ankara, the Balkans has been one region where Turkish foreign policy has been a success, at least compared to the failures of Middle Eastern adventurism. After the failed coup in Turkey in 2016, an improvement in relations with Belgrade corresponded with Ankara’s hunt for the followers of exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, which strained Turkish ties with Albania and Kosovo. In contrast, the Serbian government had no problem extraditing Kurdish activists to Turkey. Ankara became more pragmatic and transactional, moving away from the invocation of the Ottoman legacy to being a power broker that maintained parallel links with the key local ethnic groups.

Troublesome Balance

Despite these efforts, Turkey faces an enduring challenge: how to balance ties with both the Serbs and Albanians, particularly the Kosovo Albanians. Indeed, the challenge of maintaining a balance between these two ethnic groups has only intensified as Ankara becomes more assertive as a diplomatic actor and arms exporter in the region. 

To understand the challenge Ankara now faces, it is first key to understand how its role in the region continues to evolve. In the Balkans, Ankara sees new markets and customers for its rapidly growing defense industry. Beyond the money, the Balkans serves as another area where Turkish techno-nationalism, as exemplified by the country’s indigenous defense industry, can advance Erdogan’s domestic political agenda. Moreover, the Balkans pays political dividends in other ways. In 2023, a whole set of Balkan leaders endorsed Erdoğan’s presidential bid, including the likes of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and even Milorad Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska, a Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Increased Turkish activism in the region also reflects the breakdown of Ankara’s ties with the West. The Balkans have now emerged as an area where Erdoğan can display defiance toward the West or engage the West on a more cooperative basis, depending on circumstances. In 2018, when several European governments with large Turkish diasporas for prohibiting him from holding electoral rallies on their soil, he responded by organizing a large rally in Sarajevo. 

At the same time, when the war in Ukraine generated concerns about the spread of conflict to the Balkans, Turkey has worked to present itself as a stabilizing force and NATO partner in the region. In June 2023, after Kosovo appointed Albanian mayors in Serbian-populated municipalities after the elections boycotted by the Kosovo Serbs, violent unrest took place in which Hungarian and Italian Kosovo Force peacekeepers were injured. In response, NATO reinforced Kosovo Force with 700 troops, and Turkey contributed 500 members of Turkey’s 65th Mechanized Infantry Brigade. In September 2023, Turkey pulled back after the situation was deemed to be stabilized, but Turkey remains one of the big mission contributors. In October 2023, after an armed fight between Kosovo police and an armed Serbian group in the village of Banjska, Turkish Major General Özkan Ulutaş became the first Turkish commander of Kosovo Force, holding this post until September 2024. While General Ulutaş was not under Ankara’s command, his role still benefited Turkey. In October 2023, when Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Güler visited Serbia to meet Miloš Vučević, Kosovo Force was the dominant item on the agenda. That same month, Güler met Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani and discussed the same issue. 

On top of this, Turkey has been training and equipping the Kosovo Security Forces to help transform it into a full-fledged army by the year 2028. This has caused alarm in Serbia, in that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244 does not allow any other armed formation in Kosovo except NATO’s peacekeeping forces, the Kosovo Force. Even more concerning for Belgrade are the drones. In 2020 and 2022, Serbian President Vućič expressed interest in purchasing Turkish drones. But as Serbia is now the largest drone operator in the Western Balkans, its neighbors are seeking the same capability. In May 2023, the Kosovo Security Forces received five Bayraktar TB2 attack drones, which could potentially be used over Serbian populated municipalities in the north of Kosovo that are not fully under their government’s control. In anger over the delivery of drones to Kosovo, Serbia abandoned its plan to buy Bayraktar and decided to go for United Arab Emirates–produced drones. 

Yet despite this setback, Ankara continues to try to balance ties between Serbs and Albanians. Serbia has a much more advanced industry than some of its neighbors, making it a more suitable partner for Turkish efforts to win new markets. In 2019, Ankara and Belgrade signed an agreement that included military-industrial cooperation, allowing Ankara to transfer technology and know-how to Belgrade, which would act as Ankara’s springboard for European defense markets. Another NATO-approved project in 2023 brought together researchers from Turkish and Serbian universities to develop an early warning system against a nuclear attack on NATO border states. 

At the same time, Ankara has worked to build relations with Kosovo’s new Prime Minister Albin Kurti since he came to power in 2021. Former Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi was a close friend of Ankara’s, but he is now being tried for war crimes. Thus, Erdoğan’s most recent visit was a chance to continue improving ties with Belgrade and with the new Albanian regime. 

Conclusion

The overlap of interest between Turkey and its Albanian and Serbian partners, as well as the fact of the transactional and pragmatic nature of the leaders involved, will help ensure that this pattern continues. Turkey will maintain its old policy of sometimes clashing and sometimes cooperating with the West, and using the Balkans as low-hanging fruit to develop a working agenda and leverage with the West will continue. However, the local nations accustomed to playing external powers against each other will use this opportunity to engage powers like Turkey and use it for their ends. While the Serbs and Albanians are irrelevant factors in European and global geopolitics, in the Balkans, they are the two on which the regional equilibrium depends. Ankara appears to be mindful of this reality, and it tries to act upon it, although with the unresolved Kosovo dispute, it is not an easy task. 

Whether the new Turkish role as a regional security provider will make this balance more volatile is dependent on the local elites. Belgrade and Tirana have grown closer in recent years, showing that policymakers in both countries believe regional balance is dependent on their countries. The elephant in the room is still the unresolved issue of Kosovo, where the failure of E.U.-mediated talks creates the risk of violence in North Kosovo. War in the Balkans is not likely; the region is deeply ingrained in Western security structures, NATO acts as a deterrent, and local countries lack capacity for prolonged warfare. But more localized violence is always possible. Any instability in the Balkans would be bad news for Turkey, which is already faced with conflicts in other neighboring regions. Thus. Ankara would do well to support E.U. efforts by using its political leverage to help break the deadlock in talks between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians. Otherwise, Turkey will see its weapons sales to the region used by local power-brokers to advance their own agendas.

Dr Vuk Vuksanović is a senior researcher at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) and an associate of LSE IDEAS, a foreign policy think tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). This piece is in part based on the report he authored for the BCSP.

Image: Hamed Malekpour via Wikimedia Commons