Reflections of Turkey-Russian Federation relations in print media after the year 2000

The end of the Cold War marked a new era across the globe in terms of profound changes and bilateral diplomatic relations in which all the countries laid aside old prejudices. The relationship between Turkey and Russian Federation gained profound changes after the Russian Federation, which was established with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, abondened previous economic policies by adopting new Western reforms. The early 2000s witnessed rapid improvements in the bileteral relations between the two countries especially after Putin came to power in 2000, two years before the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won general elections in Turkey. As a matter of fact, Turkey's deepening partnership with Russia is based on mutual interest. One of the major strategic common interests of both sides is natural gas. The route of delivery of Russian gas to European consumers is significant as the main factor in the recovery of the Russian Federation's economy depends on gas sales to Europe. On the other hand, Turkey has been cooperating with Russia in the field of energy, seeking to be a key transit route, due to its desire to gain more influence in the international arena. This cooperation can be observed recently in variety of areas and subjects, such as Turkey's purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems. Nonetheless, the existence of diplomatic rift between the two countries cannot be denied and one of the most important crisis emerged particularly after the Turkish military shot down a Russian SU-24 fighter jet. This research focuses on the development of bileteral relationship between Turkey and Russian Federation within the scope of positive and negative aspects. For his purpose, we analyzed the most crucial developments on Turkish-Russian relations, "2015 Russian Sukhoi Su-24 shootdown, S-400 agreement and Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula". In order to analyse print media content we selected three major outlets; Hurriyet, Sabah and Sozcu newspapers. The first pages of these selected newspapers were analyzed for a week. The analysis was carried out in the context of the specified criteria such as headings and spots on the first pages, images used, whether the news was positive or negative, whether it was a critical approach. Key words: Turkey, Russian Federation, Turkish printed media, Hürriyet, Sabah, Sözcü