Unsteady turbulence in stably and unstably stratified flow with system rotation around the vertical axis is analysed using the rapid distortion theory (RDT). Complete linear solutions for the spectra, variances and covariances are obtained analytically, and their characteristics, including the short- and long-time asymptotics and the effect of initial conditions, are examined in detail. It has been found that the rotation modifies the energy partition among the three kinetic energy components and the potential energy, and the ratio of the Coriolis parameter f to the Brunt–Väisälä frequency N, i.e. f/N, determines the final steady values of these components. The ratio also determines the phase of the energy/flux oscillation. Depending on whether f/N > 1 or f/N < 1, there is a phase shift of ±π/4. However, unsteady aspects are largely dominated by stratification. This occurs because the effects of the Coriolis parameter f appear only in the form of fk3, which vanishes for the horizontal wavenumber components (k3 = 0), which contribute most to the energies and the fluxes. For example, the oscillation frequency of the energies and the fluxes asymptotes to 2N over a long time, in agreement with the stratified non-rotating turbulence. The initial time development is also dominanted by the stratification, and the short-time asymptotics (Nt, ft [Lt ] 1) agree with those for non-rotating stratified fluids in the lowest-order approximation. In the special case of f = N, all the wavenumber components oscillate in phase, leading to no inviscid decay of oscillation. This is in contrast to the general case of f ≠ N, in which inviscid decay has been observed. For pure rotation (f ≠ 0, N = 0), analytical solutions showed that any turbulence that is initially axisymmetric around the rotation axis recovers exact three-dimensional isotropy in the kinetic energy components. Comparison with previous DNS and experiments shows that many of the unsteady aspects of the kinetic and potential energies and the vertical density flux can be explained by the linear processes described by RDT. Even the time development of the vertical vorticity, which would represent the small-scale characteristics of turbulence, agrees well with DNS. For unstably stratified turbulence, the initial processes observed in DNS and experiments, such as the initial decay of the kinetic energy due to viscosity and the subsequent rapid growth of the vertical kinetic energy compared to the horizontal kinetic energy, could be explained by RDT.