Moscow’s turnaround on Turkey
Common national interests such as security and economic issues remain the prime core of improved relations between Moscow and Ankara.
Moscow’s rapprochement with Turkey is unlikely to be easy, but it may well proceed somewhat more rapidly than many expect. Notwithstanding public and personal differences between President Vladimir Putin and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, each of the two men appears to have embraced former British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston’s famous assertion that “nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.”
Indeed, despite the gap of over 150 years between Palmerston’s tenure and today’s times, Putin and Erdogan may have related quite well to the renowned British statesman, whose foreign policy is still described as “assertive and ‘manly’” on the United Kingdom government’s official website. Both Putin and Erdogan likely hope that their peoples will remember them in similar terms in future centuries. Still, Erdogan’s apology — and Putin’s ready acceptance of it — suggests that each has subordinated his “manliness” to his pragmatism and that permanent interests have prevented permanent enmity between Russia and Turkey.
Notwithstanding important differences over Syria and, for that matter, over Russia’s annexation of the Crimea Peninsula and its Turkic Tatar population, Russia and Turkey do have consequential common national interests, including security, political and economic aims. Most immediate of course is their shared interest in combating extremist Islamist terrorism — dramatized by the June 28 bombing at the Istanbul airport, which occurred between Erdogan’s letter of apology and Putin’s favorable response. In fact, while Russia and Turkey appear to have negotiated the ritualistic exchange in advance — Fyodor Lukyanov, the chairman of Russia’s prestigious Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, told Al-Monitor that it was “certainly discussed behind the scene for a while … on a technical, although pretty high level” — the Istanbul attack likely helped Putin to explain his about-face to the Russian people.
Moreover, despite Turkey’s NATO membership and even its recent deployment of an airborne radar (AWACS) to provide security for the alliance’s Warsaw summit, Ankara’s efforts to focus NATO’s attention on terrorism as an alliance security matter fell flat at a meeting devoted to public displays of resolve in deterring Moscow in Europe.
