Political relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia (2002-2020)

The Arabian Peninsula, which includes the territory of today's Saudi Arabia, was annexed under Ottoman rule at the beginning of the 16th century. After 400 years of Ottoman rule, it was officially established as an independent state by Abdulaziz al-Saud in 1932 and renamed as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The new Republic of Turkey, established after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire along with World War I, pursued a foreign policy towards the West and did not establish close relations with Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia. Turkey's relations with Saudi Arabia have progressed more positively than ever before with the AKP government coming to power in 2002 and relations between the two countries have been strengthened in areas such as politics, trade, tourism and culture. In 2006, a king-level visit was made from Saudi Arabia to Turkey for the first time in 40 years. However, after the revolutionary movements that took place in Arab countries in 2011 and were called the "Arab Spring", relations between the two countries began to decelerate due to their positions on the political events in the region. After the Arab Spring, serious crises decisively emerged between the two countries. Turkey's support for Qatar in the crisis that broke out in 2017 when five countries, including Saudi Arabia, broke off diplomatic relations with Qatar; the tensions between Turkey and Saudi Arabia in the conflict in Libya due to positioning on different fronts and the murder of Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudis in the Consulate General of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul in 2018 are important diplomatic crisis between the two countries in this period. This thesis deals with Turkey-Saudi Arabia relations between 2002-2020.