An last Tuesday, the Presidents of Turkey and Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, met in Tehran, shared a confidential smile and exchanged a firm handshake. Erdogan was the first politician from a NATO country to personally meet and shake hands with Putin, the man who ordered this war, since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
The picture three weeks earlier in Madrid was completely different. When Erdogan and American President Joe Biden stood side by side at the NATO summit, one could hardly get the impression that the two shared a mutual sympathy. They are at the head of the two largest contingents of troops in the alliance.
Like the US, Erdogan’s Turkey relies on the power of its armed forces to achieve its goals. It has no problem with NATO’s two percent target, and even spends 2.8 percent of its gross domestic product on the military. But unlike in the long decades of the Cold War, during which Turkey was a silent recipient of orders from Western states, today it is positioning itself on the world stage with a new self-confidence, increasingly also as an independent power.
Erdogan may be an awkward conversationalist for many, with an oversized ego and bad manners that have never worn off since his teenage years when he had to hold his own in a rough Istanbul neighborhood. But he has mastered the game of power like no other Turkish politician far and wide, and he uses every opportunity that others offer him. At home, it’s the mistakes of his competitors, and outside the country, it’s above all any power vacuum that he recognizes and fills more quickly than others.
Turkey’s importance will increase
A look at the map shows the geostrategic importance of Turkey. Since the Cold War, in which the country successfully defended NATO’s south-eastern flank as an indispensable bulwark against the Soviet Union, its importance has continued to grow. Russia’s route to the warm seas of the world leads through Turkey’s two straits: the Bosphorus, which connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, which connects the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea.
A long border connects the country with Syria, Iraq and Iran, which can pose a threat to the West for various reasons. In addition, Turkey, with its gas pipelines from Central Asia and Iran, is an indispensable energy hub for Europe. Its importance for Europe’s “Southern Gas Corridor” will continue to increase in the post-Russian gas era.
Quite a few accuse Erdogan of wanting to rebuild the Ottoman Empire, which had stretched across three continents, and set himself up as caliph at the head of the Islamic world. A century after the fall of the multi-ethnic Ottoman state, this assumption sounds absurd, but it contains a grain of truth: Because the country with its great history wants to ensure order in its region as a hegemonic power in its interest. Also at the price, then no longer to be clearly assigned to just one camp.
The result is a policy that appears Janus-faced from a Western perspective. On the one hand, it is in Europe’s interest that Turkey holds back refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan at its borders and also within the country itself. It is in NATO’s interests for Turkey to prevent Russian warships from returning through its Straits to the Black Sea. And it is in the interest of many around the world that Turkey is willing to use its navy to create a security corridor in the Black Sea through which wheat from Ukraine can reach consumers around the world.
Erdogan has not always given the EU the cold shoulder
Nonetheless, western Turkey is met with great skepticism, which is steadily increasing. When Sweden and Finland joined NATO, Turkey lacked any solidarity that is fundamental to an alliance, in the Aegean it agitated NATO partner Greece with saber-rattling, in the Mediterranean it was questioning the borders of the law of the sea, and since 2016 it has repeatedly militarily in Intervened in Syria, Iraq, Libya and the Caucasus.
#Dispute #West #Turkey #hegemon