Despite having the second largest army in NATO, Turkey does not seem to want to enter into a confrontation with Russia. Its position is discreet diplomacy.
The war in Ukraine has offered unpublished images such as those of a Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone destroying Russian BMD-3 tanks. Turkey is an international actor that has not attracted as much attention in recent years as the Islamic State, the US, Russia or China. That country has changed in the last decade internally and, above all, in its game of alliances with other countries. How do you reconcile being a NATO member state, an EU candidate and a friend of Putin? Can he be considered a neutral actor? What opportunities for peace can it offer?
In the ancient East, it was common practice for rulers to announce the decisions they made from the main door of their palaces, thus giving publicity to the edicts that were forged inside. Thus, the term “Great Gate” became a synecdoche of the Palace and, by extension, of the decisions of the Government, in this case the sultan. The expression “Sublime Puerta” spread among the European courts after the Franco-Ottoman alliance reached in 1536 between King Francis I of France, hated enemy of Charles I of Spain and V of Germany, and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
Now, Erdogan’s decisions are now devoid of so many rhetorical figures and are rather pragmatic, which allows him on occasions to combine attitudes that at first glance would seem contradictory or even exclusive.
On the one hand, he is accused of being an autocrat and a human rights violator (not only with the Kurds), and on the other he was a member of the European Economic Community (since 1963) and is maintained as the candidate to be a member of the EU. oldest (since 1999). On the one hand he is a member of the Atlantic Alliance (since February 1952), while on the other he is a staunch ally of Putin.
In recent decades, practically coinciding with Putin’s arrival in power, Turkey changed course in its foreign policy. The presidencies of Abdullah Gül (2007-2014) and that of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (prime minister between 2003 and 2014 and president of the Republic since 2014) moved from a clearly pro-European and pro-Western position to one less enthusiastic about the values promoted by the EU , perhaps because of the boredom of waiting and waiting to be accepted as a full member of the Union.
Erdogan, in the opposite direction to European values
As reflected in the Lisbon Treaty, Brussels is now engaged in the effort to create a political union and Erdogan has taken steps in recent years in the opposite direction to the aforementioned European values. Not only for leading an Islamist party (opposed to the secular and secular values of the Union), but he also carried out a self-coup in 2016, which was followed by a fierce repression by thousands of judges, journalists, lawyers… In addition to his always commented treatment towards the Kurds.
The war in Syria, which began in 2011, did not help to clarify his role in regional security either, but rather he was mired in accusations of buying oil from the Islamic State.
Wars are, among many other things, propitious occasions for true intentions to be revealed, authentic alliances, for actors to take sides on one side or another. States can rarely stay away from that decision-making, exempt from such a tremendous dilemma.
Turkey has the second largest army in NATO, after the US, with about half a million soldiers, but its bet does not seem to be to enter into a clear military confrontation with Russia. Not even to stir up the verbal attack against Putin, nor to diplomatically close the siege against him and his environment through economic sanctions or various blockades.
discreet diplomacy
Between March 11 and 13, a very high-level diplomatic forum was held in the Turkish city of Antalya, in which, among others, President Zelensky and the Secretary General of NATO participated. At the moment, this is the great Turkish contribution: discreet and public diplomacy so that the adversaries approach positions. It is obvious that this war will only end thanks to dialogue between the parties and Turkey can play an essential role.
The war we are witnessing is not a simple fight for one more piece of land. Russia is the largest country in the world, it does not need more territory. In addition, incorporating Ukraine within its borders would mean assuming all the internal problems that it had been dragging practically since its independence, to which it would be necessary to add the internal dissidence against the invader.
This war is rather one more episode – a very eloquent and noisy one, yes, as well as costly in all terms – of the reconfiguration of the international system. According to the Russian narrative, the international system born of World War II broke with US hegemony after the collapse of the USSR, and now that the US appears to be in decline or at least retreating from the world stage, it is time to establish new rules of the game.
It is not time, according to the Kremlin, to deal the cards to continue the same game, but it is time to change the game. In this new stage, China will be the main power and Russia its main ally.
And Turkey? Which side will it fall on?
This article has been published in ‘
The Conversation‘
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