The Balkans as a competition territory in foreign politics: The politics of the Gulf countries regarding the Balkans

Gulf countries, known by oil and natural gas, have achieved rapid development in many areas such as geopolitics, economic and tourism thanks to revenues from reserves. However, oil, along with the economic stability of its reserves, has been a source of the increasing number of conflicts and conflicts threatening international security as well as the competition among the Gulf countries in the Middle East. In general, the Gulf countries, which have continued to compete indirectly or outside their own territorial boundaries, started to pursue different foreign policy due to the instability and crises in the region and tried to establish new allies. The economic crisis that started at the end of 2008 caused the Balkan countries economies to be seriously affected by the reduction of funding sources from Europe and the United States and made Balkan countries seek new investors In this context, the Gulf countries have taken this opportunity to revitalize their relations with the Balkan countries and the Balkans became the new competition area for the leading oil-rich Gulf countries Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In this study, the cultural, economic and political activities of the Gulf countries have been examined in the context of soft power in order to reveal the motivations of their competition in the Balkans. The results suggested by the study are that the Gulf countries, which started to follow a more active foreign policy outside the Middle East, have turned to the Balkan countries for political, economic and social reasons. The limited access to food resources and depletion of oil reserves have led to the growth of existing conflicts among Gulf countries and became a key element of the competition among them. The Gulf countries are trying to find more reliable allies in order to consolidate their leadership positions and in response to the problems in the Middle East and Turkey's growing power. Another important result is the impact of the relations between the Gulf and Balkan countries on the Balkans, which identified as negative in terms of the emerging economic and political dependency and as positive in terms of the revival of economy and tourism