Hybrid War and Its Strategic Implications to Turkey

Abstract

Discussions on the hybrid threats and hybrid wars have begun to gain interest among the security communities around the world since 2000s, and exponentially increased after Russian-Ukraine conflict in 2014. The political and military conflict between Russia and Turkey since November 2015 has carried the discussion to Turkey. Now it is believed that Turkey is in fact in a multi-front hybrid war with some of its neighbors but not just Russia. In this article it is aimed to fully explore hybrid war concept and its strategic implications to Turkey. The definitions of hybrid threat, hybrid conflict and hybrid war is considered in the first section. Then Russian hybrid war concept is discussed. Next, features and consequences of hybrid war are applied to Turkey in order to identify the strategic implications. Finally, recommendations are made as to a way ahead for Turkish decision makers with respect to fighting hybrid war.