As
Turkey's coup strains ties with West, detente with Russia gathers
pace
ISTANBUL/MOSCOW | By
Nick Tattersall and Alexander Winning
World | Sat Aug 6,
2016 3:08am EDT
As Turkey's
relations with Europe and the United States are strained by the
fallout from its failed coup, President Tayyip Erdogan travels to
Russia on Tuesday to meet Vladimir Putin in a trip he may hope will
give the West pause for thought.
Turkish officials
insist Erdogan's visit to St. Petersburg is no sign that the NATO
member and European Union membership candidate is turning its back on
the West. Rather, they say, it is the next step in a rapprochement
with Russia that started weeks before the July 15 attempted putsch.
But the thaw with
Moscow, which imposed trade sanctions nine months ago after Turkey
downed a Russian fighter jet near the Syrian border, comes as
Ankara's relationship with the West could scarcely be more fractious.
Erdogan and many
Turks have been incensed by what they see as Western concern over a
post-coup crackdown but indifference to the bloody events themselves,
in which more than 230 people were killed as rogue soldiers bombed
parliament and seized bridges with tanks and helicopters.
The Turkish
government has blamed the coup on followers of a cleric in
self-imposed exile in the United States, and purged tens of thousands
of his suspected followers from positions as teachers, police, judges
and soldiers. Western countries say the purge has been too fast and
indiscriminate.
So damaged are
relations that Germany's foreign minister said this week there was no
basis for discussions and that "we are talking with each other
like emissaries from two different planets." Austria's
chancellor suggested talks on Turkish membership of the EU should be
suspended.
"For Erdogan,
this meeting with Putin is certainly an opportunity to signal to
Turkey’s partners in the West that it could have other strategic
options," said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and
analyst at the Carnegie Europe think tank.
"There is this
perception game that Turkey could strategically gravitate toward
Russia if the relationship with the West cannot be maintained. There
is also an incentive on the side of Russia to use the crisis between
Turkey and the West to undermine NATO’s cohesiveness," Ulgen
said.
Erdogan's meeting
with Putin will be only his second with a foreign head of state since
the coup, following a visit to Ankara by the Kazakh president on
Friday. Turkish officials have questioned why no Western leader has
come to show solidarity.
"Both Russia
and Turkey are outcasts as far as the West is concerned," said
Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International
Affairs Council, a foreign policy think tank close to the Russian
Foreign Ministry.
"On the face of
it, the failed coup has pulled Turkey closer to Russia. But there
still remain serious differences between the two countries," he
told Reuters.
Disagreements
persist over Syria, where Moscow backs President Bashar al-Assad but
Ankara wants him ousted, as well as the South Caucasus, where Turkey
has backed Azerbaijan in a conflict with Armenia, a Russian ally,
over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.
"The meeting
between Putin and Erdogan ... will show how far both sides are
willing to compromise. The question is whether the current tactical
de-escalation can translate into a deeper strategic partnership,"
Kortunov said.
SIGNAL TO THE WEST
Washington is likely
to be watching closely. Its ties with Ankara are strained over the
continued presence in the United States of Turkish cleric Fethullah
Gulen, accused by Erdogan of orchestrating the attempted coup.
Gulen, who has lived
in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, denies involvement
in the coup and Washington has said it will extradite him only if
Turkey provides evidence, much to the Turkish government's
frustration.
U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry is expected to visit Turkey in late August,
officials have said, with Gulen's case likely to be high on the
agenda.
"At a time like
this, Turkish public psychology expects expressions of solidarity and
togetherness, but that's not what is forthcoming from the West,"
said Faruk Logoglu, a former Turkish ambassador to Washington and
until recently a senior lawmaker in the main secularist opposition.
While the timing of
Erdogan's Russia trip could be interpreted as a signal to the West,
Logoglu doubted it meant a full Turkish embrace of Russia or lasting
damage to U.S. ties.
"The
Turkish-American relationship is like a catholic marriage: there is
no divorce. Both sides need each other," he said. "It has
experienced severe tests in the past and I think it will weather this
one as well."
Closer ties between
Ankara and Moscow could be more troublesome for Europe, which sees a
plan for a gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey, a project known as
TurkStream, as a complication in its efforts to cut dependence on
Russian energy.
"Gas
cooperation between Russia and Turkey could be scary for the European
Union," said Akin Unver, assistant professor of international
relations at Kadir Has university in Istanbul and an expert in
regional energy.
"The EU wants
to diversify suppliers and link eastern Mediterranean gas to Europe
in the long run ... if Russia bypasses all that with TurkStream that
would not help. But the EU is in no position to bargain. Politically,
it is very weak."
"SHORT-LIVED
TURBULENCE"
Putin's foreign
policy aide Yuri Ushakov said Syria would be the main topic at the
meeting with Erdogan. TurkStream, nuclear power projects, and the
resumption of Russian charter flights to Turkey, which stopped after
the downing of the fighter jet last November, would also be
discussed.
Tourism revenue, a
mainstay of the Turkish economy, has been decimated by the drop in
Russian visitors, whose numbers fell 87 percent in the first six
months of the year. The sector has also been hit by a series of
suicide bombings.
"The Turkish
side has given a written guarantee that they will fulfill Russia’s
recommendations on extra security measures for Russian tourists at
Turkish resorts," Ushakov told a briefing in Moscow on Friday,
adding that Turkey had granted Russian experts permission to check
the measures on the ground.
On Syria, Kortunov
said there was room for the two sides to move closer together on
options for a political transition to end the five-year civil war and
on the shape of a new constitution for the country.
"In cooperation
with Russia, we would like to facilitate a political transition in
Syria as soon as possible," Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin
said in an interview with Russia's TASS news agency. But he repeated
Turkey's long-held conviction that such a move would only be possible
with Assad's departure.
Kalin described the
recent tensions with Russia as "short-lived turbulence" in
a friendship that dated back centuries. Leaders in the West might be
hoping the same is true of their relations with Ankara.
"The political
backdrop does suggest there will be areas of convergence between
Turkey and Russia," said Ulgen, the former diplomat. "What
is not realistic, though, is to view Russia as a strategic
alternative to Turkey's Western anchoring. Turkey remains an ally of
the West."
(Additional
reporting by Tulay Karadeniz and Ercan Gurses in Ankara, Humeyra
Pamuk in Istanbul and Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; writing by Nick
Tattersall; editing by Peter Graff)
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