Edited by Desi Tzoneva
Turkey has carried out a turn towards Russia in light of the growing tensions between Ankara and the West. The personal meeting between Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already led to the growth of analysts’ anxiety, although, there is nothing supernatural in Ankara’s steps towards Russia. These steps have only one goal – Erdogan’s desire to keep his monopoly of power. In general, this motivation was presented in all recent major steps of the Turkish leader in domestic and foreign policy directions. In this case, Russia was chosen as a counterweight to the battered relations with the West, but not as something global, as Western analysts try to present.
The first and main point that determines Ankara’s turn to Moscow is economy. The damage caused to the Turkish economy by Russia in response to the incident with the Su-24, is extremely ‘painful’ for Turkey. The economic factor is starting to play a major role in the plans of Erdogan now. If we look at the base of electoral support for the Turkish leader, we can easily understand that the reason for his political success was predefined by the breakthrough in the economy. Therefore, Turkish voters can forgive him a lot, and Russia in this context, is one of the ‘leading engines’ of this process. Russia’s market provides the main part of the contracts, jobs etc. And that is not to mention the import of Russian gas, which by the way, was not touched by the sanctions.
Amid worsening relations with Moscow, Ankara, represented by Erdogan, made a choice in favour of strengthening the alliance with Brussels, striving to achieve a visa-free regime with the EU and financial assistance for solving the immigration crisis, as a minimum, and intensification of the process of its accession to the EU, as a maximum. Both of these tasks would provide the unconditional support of the Turkish electorate, because everyone knows the close attachment of the Turkish labour market to the EU. In this scenario, Erdogan strengthened his personal position and relatively easily allowed himself to pass through the fateful referendum on actual transformation of Turkey into a presidential republic. But this plan has not worked because Erdogan used ‘migratory blackmail’ against the EU. And European capitals do not forgive such things.
In this regard, some analysts seriously say that the purpose of Erdogan’s steps toward Moscow are an “intimidation of the West, in order to obtain from him the promised.” This is not true. The turn toward Moscow took place at the moment when Erdogan was convinced that any visa-free regime with the EU was impossible, and tranches for the resettlement of migrants are provided with a ‘big scratch’. Brussels just cheated him, getting an agreement on migration flows without giving anything in return. This, by the way, is a classic European policy.
The electorate has not accepted ‘European values’ as a ‘carrot’, and the government started to seek an alternative. In this case, there was only one alternative – establishing relations with Russia, which would lead to the rise of economic relations and the flow of Russian tourists to Turkish resorts, as well as to the prospect of the transformation of Turkey into a gas hub for European consumers that would be more effective for dialogue with Brussels than a continuous exhortation of refugees fleeing to Europe. By the way, the presence of refugees in Turkey is also beginning to irritate the electorate and something must be done with this. We have already seen how Turks neutralise the threat of a migration crisis – they just open fire on people crossing the border.
Turkey has become an Islamist dictatorship. The coup should have succeeded. We cannot let a century of secular democracy and the liberty of 90 million people fall to the Muslim Brotherhood. The fact these two are collaborating only strengthens my position that Russia is just a self-serving power without regards to the people. They have stabbed the Kurds in the back. The Kurds have no friends but the Mountains.
Actually, the Jpost news of Israel published their plans two years back on the important of fracturing Iraq and Syria and Iran into smaller ethnic groups with their own nations. (the news article said this was a natural even which needed to happen) They said this would be more peaceful to Israel and easier to deal with them each in relations. So the US plan is definitely to fracture Iraq at all cost. Also, it has long been public knowledge that both the Mossad and CIA have long term agents that work with and within the Kurdish community. Practically alliances really.
The Federation of Northern Syria-Rojava is going to establish a secular federal democracy in Northern Syria. Nobody can take away their territory (not even a triumphant Assad as he’ll be dealing with an Islamist insurgency). I think the US certainly prefers the SDF to ISIS or Assad and will support the SDF capturing Raqqa. Right now Iraq is aligned with Iran and is becoming a Shi’ite Islamic republic .
The reason for this rapprochement is simply the fact that Russia’s stubborn position (even with limited souvereignity) has led to cracks in the angloamerican establishment. Even the mostly psychological damage of the Brexit vote led to Erdogan shifting his stance a bit.
What do you mean by (even with limited souvereignity) ? Please explain.
We lost the Cold War and still live under the rules of the angloamericans. Putin is the only reason why not everything is falling apart. What did you think? Our economy and financial system are hopeless, 75% of the money is US Dollars. The sanctions hit VERY hard because of that reason exactly. And the central bank has even acted against the (foreign dictated) constitution and permitted a crash of the rubel. Does this look like souvereign policy to you?
Well, lucky you, the rest of the world has no souvereignity at all (except maybe China). Europe? Nothing but vassals.
Ha! Sadly true. We have a good chance to restore souvereignity and there are signs that it will happen this year in the Duma elections (we have no choice as they are very desperately trying to destroy us).
Turkey is now an Islamic-dictatorship (like Saudi Arabia), without democracy. The Coup should have succeeded. When the US EU UK and Russian globalist don’t wan’t the coup to succeed. You know it was a good coup against the status quo. It was a crime against all the Turkish people when Putin sold out the Turks into slavery in the hands of Islamist =extremist. History will not forget, and I fear one day the Turks will massively retaliate against the Russians for interfering in their revolution against Islamic-extremist.
Cartoon, Perfectly correct.
And everybody else it is doing it withot any allowens – That is better.
Sorry dude, but that’s not what the Torah says. Not even close. In fact, the opposite.
But, go ahead. make stuff up.
Are we obsessing with the Jews?
Russia should not try to enter any kind of a “rapprochement” with the Erdogan regime, which will not bring any real benefits and is bound to backfire sooner or later, when Erdogan backstabs Russia again. Erdogan is an Islamist dictator with no regard for any democratic liberties, who is snuffing out secularism in Turkey. He continues to support jihadis in Syria; and has neither publicly apologized for downing the Russian plane and causing the deaths of Russian servicemen in Syria, nor paid any reparations for those. He has not really broken with the U.S., NATO, or the Anglo-Zio-Saudi axis. He is just trying to use the fake rapprochement with Russia as a temporary card to try to pressure the U.S. and EU into concessions; he also wants to lull Russia into passivity as he consolidates his position internally, and to get one-sided economic benefits from Russia to shore up the flagging economy and head off public discontent with his regime.
Russia should instead be supporting secularists, Kurds, and Alawites in Turkey, all of whom are opposed to the terror-supporting Islamonationalist ideology of Erdogan and his party, and Russia’s natural allies.