Putin exploits crisis in US-Turkish relations
The Russian president has suggested more defense cooperation with Turkey and says Turkey's president may be willing to coordinate with Syria's Bashar al-Assad.
Just four days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Moscow, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived on April 9 for a full day of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, leading to agreements to expand trade, tourism and energy cooperation as well as hints at deepening defense ties and discussions about next steps in Syria.
As Maxim Suchkov writes, Putin gave Erdogan the empathy the Turkish leader isn’t getting from Washington. And Erdogan welcomed the Russian bear hug. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered setbacks in municipal elections in Turkey’s largest cities on March 31, and US-Turkish relations remain, well, pretty awful.
