Erdoğan
and Putin reignite the bromance
In
St.Petersburg, the Turkish and Russian leaders will find common
ground in their defiance of the West.
By
Owen Matthews
8/9/16, 5:30 AM CET
ISTANBUL — The
long-standing friendship between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is due to resume after a 10-month
interruption as the two strongmen meet for a summit in St. Petersburg
Tuesday.
Relations between
the presidents of Russia and Turkey have been frayed since last
November when Turkish F-16s downed a Russian bomber that strayed over
the Syrian-Turkish border. But now, after a period of mutual
hostility that included a ban on Russian tourists visiting Turkey,
both combative leaders realize that more unites them than divides
them — and that it’s time to rekindle an alliance based on
defiance of the West.
The chief driver of
this Russo-Turkish re-set is last month’s failed military coup
against Erdoğan. In the aftermath of the attempted putsch by
discontented elements in the army, Erdoğan has gone on the
rhetorical warpath against alleged backers of the coup in the West.
“The script of
outrageous assault on our democracy was written abroad” — Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan
“The script of
outrageous assault on our democracy was written abroad,” Erdoğan
told Turkish television last month. He also blasted the U.S. for
refusing to extradite rogue Turkish cleric Fetullah Gülen, who has
been in exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. Erdoğan accuses Gülen —
a former ally-turned sworn-enemy — of being behind the July 15
coup. “Those who aid the enemies of Turkey cannot be called our
friends,” Erdoğan said in remarks clearly aimed at Washington.
Erdoğan has also
turned on European leaders who criticized his post-coup crackdown
that has seen 60,000 government employees and university professors
suspended from their jobs and over 15,000 suspected coup plotters
jailed and, according to Human Rights Watch, tortured. European Union
foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini threatened to axe Turkey’s
bid to join the EU if Erdoğan went ahead with plans to reintroduce
capital punishment for “a clear crime of treason.”
Turkish cleric
Fethullah Gülen at his residence in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania on
July 18, 2016. The U.S.-based cleric was accused by Ankara of
orchestrating the military coup attempt but he firmly denied
involvement | Thomas Urbain/AFP via Getty Images
Russia, by contrast,
rushed to support Erdoğan in the jittery hours after he narrowly
escaped a team of commandos sent to capture him in a holiday villa in
Marmaris. Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said this week that
Russia had offered “unconditional support” over the coup attempt,
and that Putin sent a personal letter of condolence to the families
of Turkey’s soldiers and civilians killed in the fighting.
Turkey’s deepening
anger at the West creates an ideal opportunity for Putin to pull
Erdoğan into his own fiercely anti-U.S. orbit.
Ever since massive
anti-Putin protests in 2011, Kremlin-controlled media have claimed
that Washington is plotting regime change in Russia by funding
opposition groups and waging an “information war” against Putin.
When the Panama Papers revealed massive money laundering by members
of Putin’s inner circle earlier this year, the Kremlin dismissed
the leak as American-inspired propaganda. Similarly, when Erdoğan,
his son and other close members of the ruling AK Party leadership
were linked to insider deals and corrupt sanctions-busting financial
ties with Iran, Turkey’s leader invoked a Western plot.
Over recent years,
Erdoğan has also grown more like Putin as he imprisons critical
journalists, prosecutes independent media proprietors on trumped-up
tax evasion charges and nurtures a stridently nationalistic,
xenophobic brand of personal rule. As Turkey moves away from the
West, Putin and Erdoğan are ready to form an alliance based on “an
ideology of sovereign values as a union of the deceived against the
West,” argues Alexander Baunov, a senior associate at the Carnegie
Moscow Center.
The main bone of
contention between the two leaders is Syria. Moscow backs the Assad
regime, and since September Russian bombers and helicopter gunships
flying out of a temporary Russian airbase near Latakia has turned the
tide of the war in the regime’s favor.
Turkey, by contrast,
has backed various Syrian opposition groups and turned a blind eye —
at the very least — to Saudi-funded arms supplies to Sunni rebels
that include radical jihadists. But Russia’s intervention has put
those rebels on the back foot and assured the regime’s survival —
meaning that Ankara has had to seriously re-think its strategy of
backing a rebel victory and accept that both Assad and Russia will be
players in the region for some time to come.
Syrian President
al-Assad makes surprise trip to Moscow
Russian President
Vladimir Putin with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during their
meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, October 20, 2015 | Alexey
Druzhinyn/Ria Novosti/EPA
Another reason why
Erdoğan needs to make his peace with Putin is Russia’s support for
the Syrian Kurds, who are closely allied to Kurdish separatists in
Turkey. Even though the Syrian Kurds are anti-Assad, Russia reached
out to them at the height of the jet crisis in order to undermine
Turkey and even allowed them to open their first overseas “embassy”
in Moscow. That’s anathema to Turkey, which is fiercely resisting
the Kurds’ attempts to carve out an independent state in Northern
Syria lest its own Kurdish population follow suit.
Both sides have a
strong financial incentive to patch up relations. Ever since the
Ukraine crisis in 2014, Russia has been looking for an alternative
route to export natural gas to southern Europe that avoids
Ukrainian-controlled pipelines. An ambitious scheme known as South
Stream to build a massive gas pipeline under the Black Sea and on
through Turkey to the Balkans and Central Europe was put on hold in
December. Now the South Stream talks are being revived — as well as
a deal on a Russian-built nuclear reactor in Turkey.
Back in November,
Putin called the downing of the Russian bomber “a stab in the back
carried out by terrorists.” Kremlin-controlled TV launched a bitter
campaign against Erdoğan and the “criminal band” who ran Turkey.
Today, the relationship has made a U-turn.
Russia “isn’t
just our close and friendly neighbor, but also a strategic partner,”
said Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek during a
preparatory visit to Moscow last week.
For the time being,
Turkey remains a candidate for EU membership and a key member of
NATO. But at their meeting tomorrow in St. Petersburg Putin will
surely do his best to encourage Erdoğan in his accelerating drift
away from the West.
Owen Matthews has
worked as a correspondent in Russia, Turkey and Iraq, among other
datelines, and was shortlisted for a Guardian first book award, the
Orwell Prize and the Prix Médicis.
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