İRREDANTİZM PERSPEKTİFİNDEN RUSYA’NIN 2008 SONRASI OPERASYONLARI
RUSSIA'S POST-2008 OPERATIONS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF IRREDENTISM

Summary/Abstract: Irredentism, which has not gained much place in the international relations literature, has recently become an important element of Russian foreign policy. Referring to a country's claiming rights over its compatriots living in another country and seeking to annex the territory of this community to its borders, the concept poses a major problem in terms of its definition and implementation. Furthermore, it is an undeniable fact that irredentism can lead to many problems in international relations due to the lack of a clear framework, the fact that its implementation is left to states, including the absence of a legal restriction. With the logic of irredentism, it is obvious that the possibility of states occupying or annexing each other's territories under the pretext of their cognates will bring both regional and global problems in the future. In this context, this study will examine Russia's irredentist policies since 2008 through the examples of the Georgian War, the Crimean Annexation and the Ukrainian War. The main emphasis of the study is to reveal that Russia has carried out these operations not with irredentist arguments as it claims, but as a part of its regional expansionist attitude and that irredentism has turned into a pretext.

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