The Russian English language weekly newspaper, Moscow Times, headlined Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as “The beginning of a beautiful friendship”. In fact, the meeting is significantly remarkable in view of the troubled relations between the two countries in the recent past. It is also one indication of the rapidly changing dynamics not only in the Middle East, but it goes much deeper into the heart of North Atlantic relations and Israel’s historic ties with the United States as well as the European Union (EU).
With the sad outlook that the uncontrollably bleeding of Syria will tragically continue into 2017 and even after a new tenant enters the White House in Washington, one will have to wait to see how the new American president will handle the new dynamics.
Meanwhile, the Putin-Erdogan summit meeting last week at St Petersburg carries its own significance as both Russia and Turkey are not known to have shared friendly relations in their recent history. Relations had particularly taken a sharp dive when Erdogan decided to drop the Russian president’s name from his list of favourites since the uprising in the southern city of Dara’a in Syria in 2011.
In fact, tension between Moscow and Ankara looked so frightfully high that the two countries risked almost going to war only few months ago — for the first time in two centuries. Turkey’s downing of a Russian Su-24 fighter jet, flying out of a Russian air base in the Syrian coastal town of Tartous and into Turkish air space last November, was labelled by Putin as “a stab in the back”. Russian officials went further by accusing Erdogan of “collaboration and supporting” Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and Russian television ran stories backing their claim highlighting the Chechen terrorists’ connection with Daesh.
All this seems now to have been forgotten and forgiven, as Putin and Erdogan warmly embraced each other in St Petersburg, opening the road for their “new beautiful friendship”. The bilateral summit has undoubtedly irked the western alliance of Nato, of which Turkey is the second-largest member, and disturbed United States President Barack Obama’s administration.
The most significant question that western officials in Nato and the EU are currently facing is how Erdogan’s talks with Putin would impact Turkey’s overall relations with the West. Particularly worrying is the fact that the visit to St Petersburg has come merely three weeks after the botched-up coup in Turkey. Ankara has publicly voiced its anger against the US for not informing Erdogan’s government of the plot, allegedly hatched by Turkish opposition conservative leader, Fethullah Gulen, from exile in America.
It has been reported that Ankara has expressed its anger in an unprecedented way by cutting off power to the American base of Incirlik for an entire week. Once the coup was uncovered, about 7,000 armed local police personnel in heavy vehicles surrounded the base operated solely by Americans in the Adana region of southern Turkey. The only official explanation for the move came from Turkey’s Minister for European Affairs, Omer Celik, who said it was a “security check”.
Nevertheless, Putin-Erdogan talks are expected to immediately impact the situation in Syria. In fact, Ankara has already toned down its criticism of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and it seems Turkey has also decreased its overt and covert support for the opposition forces in Damascus. Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildrim has recently even hinted at normalising ties with Damascus.
Erdogan has got a lot at stake as he seems to be turning around his country’s entire Middle East policy by looking inwards, following the failed military coup on July 15. Turkey has, since 2011, backed its own favourable rebels, mostly Islamists, against the Syrian regime, while Russia has been heavily involved in supporting the Al Assad forces since September 2015. Moscow’s intervention, coupled with the presence of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its loyal Lebanese militia of “Hezbollah”, have practically been the main reasons why Al Assad managed to hang on to power in Damascus until now.
Turkey is also expected to benefit greatly by opening up to Russia on the economic and trade fronts. The latest talks are believed to lead to easing Moscow’s trade boycott imposed on Ankara for more than four years. The volume of bilateral trade had reached the $30 billion (Dh110.34 billion) mark and the number of Russian tourists coming into Turkey had reached about three million before the boycott. Telecommunications, construction and energy are also potentially huge markets with Turkish territories, just as the passage of Russian gas is to the warm water of the Mediterranean Sea.
Interestingly, on the other side of the equation, Russia and Israel seem to have made huge strides in building up a strategically-important, mutual understanding of each other’s goals in the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already visited Moscow three times this year. This has raised speculation that Israel is getting closer to Russia. Netanyahu does not hide his contentious relationship with Obama, whom he has met only once in this past year.
But this could in no way swerve the historically solid American-Israel relations. In fact, Netanyahu told reporters while in Moscow that the US “is the cornerstone” for Israel. More importantly, the normalisation of relations between Turkey and Israel has promised to further develop bilateral cooperation in the fields of technology and security.
However, in spite of all that has happened in the last few weeks and despite the seriousness of the latest events in Turkey, Ankara’s ties with the US and EU are unlikely to be drastically affected in the long run. Turkey’s relation with the West is much more complicated and runs deep in history for it to be too easily unravel.
On the one hand, Putin and Erdogan are not known for their trustworthiness of each other. On the other, memories of Turkish-Russian wars over more than two centuries age are engraved in the psyche of the two nations.
Mustapha Karkouti is a former president of the Foreign Press Association, London. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@mustaphatache
