By Yeghia TASHJIAN

The war in Ukraine has become the latest test for Turkey’s regional ambitions in confronting those of Russia, in what has clearly become a “cooperative rivalry.” This is where both sides, despite their opposite views on various regional conflicts ranging from Libya to Syria to the South Caucasus, have worked to manage these conflicts without directly challenging one another.

The current crisis has raised Turkey’s concerns of being in the firing line of Russia’s hegemonic ambitions. It is important to note that Turkey and Russia are not allies, but bitter ‘frenemies.’ Despite having robust commercial, energy, diplomatic and military ties, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned back in 2016 that NATO has to act and increase its presence in the Black Sea.

Over the past two decades, Russia has consolidated its presence in the Black Sea region by directly controlling Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008, and annexing Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014. The Black Sea Fleet is responsible for bringing supplies to Russian forces in Syria, mostly based in the port of Tartus and Khmeimim airbase, as well as for patrolling the eastern Mediterranean. Russia’s 2015 Maritime Doctrine clearly prioritizes the Black Sea as a pillar of its power projection.

Turkey’s waning power in the Black Sea

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea tipped the balance of military power in the Black Sea in favor of Moscow. Not only has Russia significantly increased its Exclusive Economic Zone and its Black Sea coastline, it has also cancelled existing agreements with Ukraine, which limited the latter’s Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol.

Additionally, Russia has stationed new military ships and submarines and installed a dense network of advanced weapons systems across the Crimean peninsula. From Ankara’s perspective, Turkey feels surrounded by Russian military presence from the north (Crimea), east (Armenia), and south (Syria).

In response, Erdogan initiated the construction of the Istanbul Canal to put additional pressure on Russia using the 1936 Montreux Convention whereby Turkey can close the Black Sea Straits to all warships in times of war.

Indeed, following NATO’s intensified pressure, Ankara has started exercising its right under Article 19 of the Convention, and has warned all coastal and non-coastal states that it will not allow warships through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. The convention also limits the period of stay for warships belonging to non-Black Sea states in the Black Sea.

However, this action also exposed Turkey’s limitations by raising the questions: How will Turkey react if Russian naval warships seek passage through the Straits? Will Turkey prevent them? The answer is clear.

As a Black Sea state, Russia has the privileged right to transit the Turkish Straits to return its warships to their bases. The treaty states that during armed conflict, belligerent warships “shall not” pass through the Straits unless the ships belong to a state that borders the Black Sea and are returning to their home ports.

Once Turkey determined that Russia was “at war,” it had no choice under the treaty but to stop Russian warships from passing through the Straits. The only exception for passage is for Russian warships from other areas returning to their bases in the Black Sea.

For example, a Russian fleet registered in the Black Sea but currently located in the Mediterranean Sea is allowed to pass through the Turkish Straits and return to its base. The condition also applies to Russian fleets currently in the Black Sea that belong to a base in the Mediterranean or Baltic Sea. Russia is free to take them out of the Black Sea. This option provides Russia with enough space to maneuver its naval power and downplay Article 19 of the Montreux Convention.

Turkey is aware that blocking access of Russian warships through its Straits will be viewed in Moscow as a “declaration of war.” This is the last thing Erdogan wants, knowing full well that the economic and political consequences will be harsher than those Turkey tasted after it downed the Russian jet over Syria in 2015.

Turkey’s balancing act between Russia and Ukraine

While Turkey will not directly provoke Russia, it has increased its military cooperation with Ukraine. This includes the supply of Bayraktar TB2 drones to the Kiev government. The Russians, for their part, have shown their preparedness for Turkish drones. Despite the fact that the Bayraktar TB2 drones are still operating and useful to the Ukrainian side, the Russian Ministry of Defense almost daily announces that its forces are downing many drones, including TB2.

This military relationship has also involved Ukraine supplying Turkey with military engines intended to boost Turkey’s growing arms industry; in particular, the Bayraktar’s successor drone and T292 heavy attack helicopters that are currently under production.

For Russia, this poses a threat, as in the future it may shift the military balance of power towards Turkey and Ukraine in the Black Sea. It is for this reason that Russian forces destroyed most of the Ukrainian heavy military infrastructure (including its naval and air force) and arms industry.

As such, Erdogan will aim to continue cooperation with Russia in the region; but he is equally likely to step up engagement with NATO to improve his global standing and reduce international criticism of his domestic conduct. Erdogan knows that standing against Russia and directly confronting Moscow is very risky as – excluding the ongoing war in Ukraine – he would start a war on three fronts in the region: in Libya, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh.

In order to extract itself from the ongoing difficulty of placating both sides, in recent days Turkey has engaged in proactive diplomacy and mediation between Kiev and Moscow. Ankara announced that the two adversaries have made progress on their negotiations to halt the war and are “close to an agreement.” However, Ukraine’s president responded by saying that any consequential agreement with Russia would be put to a referendum. This signaled that there is no agreement in sight and Ankara’s mediating efforts are fruitless.

Turkey will not gamble with Ukraine against Russia

Dr Maxim Suchkov, a Moscow-based expert in the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) expresses concern that Turkey may view the crisis as an opportunity to re-establish itself in the Black Sea and strengthen its relations with the west. Ankara enjoys good ties with both Moscow and Kiev and seeks to balance itself, supplying arms to Ukraine, on the one hand, but also refraining from sanctioning Russia.

Suchkov argues that Turkey may indeed be useful to the Russian endgame here, but “Moscow should also be careful since President Erdogan is known for his penchant to fish in muddy waters.” Hence, even if the outcome of the conflict does not favor Erdogan’s interests, Turkey may try to wrest something out of this crisis.

For this reason, President Erdogan cannot antagonize Russia and risk full-scale war as, domestically, the implications of this battle will be heavy on the Turkish government. Already, on 22 February, six Turkish opposition parties, not including the Kurdish HDP, called on a unified platform for the revival of the parliamentary system in the country with the aim of establishing an alliance to topple Erdogan in the coming parliamentary and presidential elections in June 2023.

According to recent public surveys, the opposition coalition is polling ahead, and indeed may oust Erdogan, given the financial chaos Turkey is experiencing. The current crisis will worsen the economic and political situation of Turkey.

One sector that is especially vulnerable is tourism, as between four to seven million Russian tourists and around two million Ukrainian tourists visit Turkey each year. Moreover, western sanctions on Russia will make money transactions difficult between both countries.

Crucially, Turkey imports almost 50 percent of its gas from Russia, and with the increase in global gas prices, Turks find themselves in a difficult quandary. For these reasons, Ankara is unlikely to undertake any risky gambles and will continue to strike a balanced posture in the crisis.

Turkey still has an important role to play

Turkey has general elections scheduled for June 2023, hence any change in the leadership in Turkey would affect the current track of Russian-Turkish relations. In a post-Erdogan Turkey, Ankara is likely to move closer to the western camp due to the pro-western (pro-US) leanings of the Turkish military, entrepreneurs, technocrats, diplomats, and civil servants – regardless of their liberal or nationalistic personal views.

This could form a long-term challenge for Russia-Turkey relations, given the successful “cooperative rivalry” both sides managed to arrange in Libya, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh. It is worth mentioning that on 2 March, Meral Akşener, leader of the Turkish opposition İYİ Party, raised the alarm on whether there were any guarantees that Turkey’s eastern provinces would be safe from a similar kind of Russian aggression. She also called Russia a “security threat” for Turkey. This is another indication that the Turkish opposition is not on the same wavelength as Erdogan’s multi-vector foreign policy.

Moscow has never viewed Ankara as an equal partner, but as a junior partner that could help configure a regional order which benefits Russian interests and decreases western influence. However, if Russia becomes stuck in a Ukrainian quagmire, it may need Ankara to arrange a temporary settlement.

Will the Syrian and Nagorno-Karabakh scenario be repeated – in which both sides sidelined western influence and Russia accepted a Turkish role in the region? If Ukraine is divided into two zones, would Russia accept a Turkish ‘peacekeeping force’ in the western part of Ukraine? Would the Americans give Turkey the green light to enter such a game? What would Ankara gain in return? Is such a military adventure within Turkey’s capabilities?

According to Dr Mitat Çelikpala, Professor of International Relations and the Dean of Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences at Kadir Has University, such a scenario is beyond Turkey’s financial and military capacities – and Turkey cannot act unilaterally. Hence, for now, Turkey must continue its role of mediation between both sides to avoid any spillover effect near its borders.

thecradle.co

Day by day, the western media cry wolf: “They are arriving, they are at three meters, two, one”. Cutting corners, Bloomberg, the top of the class, has already staged the invasion: why not anticipate the news? In reality, in Ukraine, we are as in the first image of Woody Allen’s 2005 movie Match Point where the shot remains frozen in the exact moment when the tennis ball is over the net. This suspension time, full of risks and opportunities, attracts some characters searching for a leadership role under the international spotlight and, of course, an image boost at home. Easy to guess we are speaking of the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In the last weeks, he succeeded in defending the sale of lethal Turkish drones to the Ukrainians that are using them to terrorise Donbas and, at the same time, proposing himself as a peace mediator between Moscow and Kiev. Erdogan’s political identity card is irregular enough to give him some room for manoeuvre. But Turkey’s unpredictability, the chance to see the country in a soft version of non-alignment, stems more from its weakness and contradictions than from a position of strength that could support its credibility.

Although Ankara is the second-largest military force in Nato, after the U.S., it is buying the S-400 air defence system from Russia, rejecting the American Patriot. A little bit over rhetorically, someone in the country hailed the choice as a “country’s liberation from the West”. The gas import from Russia is crucial, and the economic ties include industrial, construction investments and tourism. Russian President Vladimir Putin has just accepted President Erdogan’s invitation to visit his country. The Turkish are expecting that the Kremlin will announce the date of his visit this month, after his return from the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Therefore, the relations with Moscow aren’t always good; sometimes, they are horrible. In Syria, Turkey downed a Russian Su-24 bomber in November 2015. Turkish weapons (the drones again) helped Azerbaijan blitz to retake Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia in the 2020 war. A strategic area for Russia. Ali Akbar Velayati, the international affairs adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that Turkey is “adding fuel to the fire”. More recently, some reports suggested the Turkish secret services not so covert involvement in Kazaksthan’s violent upheaval on December’s beginning.

After many years of Bruxelles’ closed-door politics, the love and hate engagement with Europe is fading in resentment. So, in the last decade, the Asian soul of Turkey has grown dramatically at the expense of the European one.

The NATO links are still strong, but Ankara prefers to gather Asia’s Turkish populations under its Pan-Turkish flag than under America’s Global Police. The recent killing in Syria of the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, is also seen as an American message to its eastern NATO ally. In the words of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Turkey “turned the areas of northern Syria into a safe zone for Daesh leaders”.

Ankara disowned the statement of its sworn enemies but its initial choice to sit out the war against ISIS speaks volumes.

The relationship with Tel Aviv has seen the same zigzag. Israeli-Turkish relations have been tense, especially since the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident in which IDF’s fire killed nine Turkish nationals. In May 2018, Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador in Ankara after deadly clashes between the Israeli Army and Palestinians on the Gaza border. The Turkish diplomatic counterpart had to leave Israel. For the last two years, Turkey has been trying to reactivate its ties with Israel. A few days ago, Erdogan announced an official visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog for mid-March. Pushed by its economic difficulties, Turkey may see normalisation with Israel to improve its economy and, at the same time, its political status in the Middle East and with the US. Especially in the new climate, real or not is too early to say, produced by the Abraham Accords, Ankara is betting on an economic opening to the Gulf countries.

Erdogan’s regard for Turkey’s geopolitical stance is conditioned partially by the wishful thinking of the pan-Turkish-New Ottoman ideology. Still, his action is more substantially guided by the urge to exit the deep Turkish economy’s crisis. Turkey’s annual inflation has just risen at nearly 49%, hitting a near 20-year high and further eroding people’s ability to buy even basic things like food. The Turkish Statistical Institute stated that the consumer price index increased by just over 11% in January from the previous month. According to the data, the yearly increase in food prices was more than 55%.

The Turkish opposition parties have repeatedly questioned the Statistical Institute’s independence and data. The independent Inflation Research Group put Turkey’s actual annual inflation at a stunning 114.87%. As financial hardship has spread, the crisis has prompted criticism of the president’s recent accumulation of authority, from appointing bank policymakers to university rectors to high court judges.

Ankara’s so-called “drones diplomacy” is easier to understand in this context. Its first success was in Libya in 2020. The Bayraktar TB2, purchased by Qatar and operated by Turkish personnel, helped the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) stop Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s assault on Tripoli. The drones are manufactured by Istanbul-based Baykar, owned by Erdogan’s son-in-law Selcuk Bayraktar. Federico Borsari of the European Council on Foreign Relations noted that the Bayaktars had become a major asset: “Their most significant effects may be in the economic opportunities and political leverage they have provided Turkey”.

Further irritating Moscow, Turkey now is planning to build near Kiev a drones factory to produce the long-endurance Anka drone, made by Turkish Aerospace Industries.

Drones are not invincible; above all, their most significant advantage is comparatively low cost. Electronic countermeasures are one of the most used defences against them. Russia has the new Tor-M2 SAM; a lethal short-range air defence missile system developed expressly against drones. But in many cases, it is like “take a hammer to crack a nut”. General Oleg Salyukov, the commander of Russia’s ground forces, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta: “The cost of one guided air defence missile is way above the cost of a small-size drone. For this reason, a relatively inexpensive small missile is being developed for this system”.

President Erdogan’s peacekeeping attempt is welcome but challenging to pursue, not recognising the Russian incorporation of Crimea as legal (still, in 2008, he rushed to recognise Kosovo’s independence) and arming the Ukrainians to the teeth. More than everything, he seems not in a position to extract any concessions from NATO. His diplomatic stunts appear more aimed to protect his business while the ball is precisely over the net than an actual peace-building process.

It would be more appropriate to call this crisis a ’Russia-US/NATO crisis’, rather than Russia-Ukraine.

While the Western world continues its strategy of containing Russia at full speed, under the leadership of the USA, the Western media (propaganda device at all) continues to pump the opposite narrative: the so-called Russian occupation.

The ’Russian occupation’ narrative featured in the Western media is actually not about the steps that Russia will take militarily. This narrative is directly related to the interests of the Western empire. Besides, this ’invasion’ propaganda will cause Ukraine to become more dependent on the West. This situation enabled NATO to refresh its blood at exactly the right time, in a period when the alliance has started to be questioned even by its members.

Western media, successfully fulfilling their historical mission, continue theur disinformation efforts in line with NATO interests, by trampling on the journalistic principles they frequently voiced: Russia’s so-called invasion of Ukraine, the ’annexation’ of Crimea, the Russian separatists ’dividing’ Ukraine, and so on…

NATO’s historical role

The ’ghost of communism’ circulating in Europe in the 19th century and the ideas of equality and freedom have become much more than a ’ghost’ with the chain of socialist revolutions and national liberation movements that started to break out in the first half of the 1900s.

The uprisings and revolutions of the oppressed nations around the world have become the biggest obstacle to the global exploitation of the imperialist system. In the 1950s, Imperialism needed a tool to remove this obstacle and to establish a world of war and exploitation: NATO.

NATO was structured by imperialism, especially against the USSR, to take a position against all kinds of progressive movements around the world, under the pretext of ’the threat of communism’. The biggest argument used by this greatest apparatus of aggression to create legitimacy for itself could be none other than a ’possible Soviet invasion’.

Today, under the leadership of the US, NATO’s rhetoric and strategy are proceeding in exactly the same way. The only difference is that the ’USSR’ was replaced by the ’Russian Federation’. The Soviets no longer exist, but there is Russia, still surrounded by aggressors and Nazis.

NATO and Turkey

In this scenario, one of the most curious regional actors is Turkey. Although Turkey, as a NATO member, has acted in the interests of NATO and the USA for many years, it is not possible to say the same, especially for the last five-year period.

The relations between Turkey and the USA have been in a deteriorating trend recently, and it can be clearly seen that steps have been taken on the ground that contradict each other’s interests, despite the parties’ endless statements of ’partnership’.

To understand Turkey’s stance on Ukraine, it is important to briefly recall Turkey’s NATO adventure:

Coming to the 1950s, Turkey was at the beginning of the liquidation process of the Kemalist Revolution, which was generously helped by the USSR. Due to its location, this country was a candidate to be the ’outpost’ of the USA in the region, and the Menderes government of the time was ’perfectly cut out’ to guard this outpost. The anti-communist propaganda and the ’Soviet threat’ that was frequently voiced were also the password for Turkey’s entrance into the ’Little America’ process.

Turkey, which joined NATO on February 18, 1952, has since been reshaped according to its strategy, that is, the US military and political interests, from its National Security Strategy to its ’threat perception’, from its army structure to its military planning.

This ’Little America’ process, which started, brought with it counter-guerrilla structures such as the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), Special Warfare Department, which were shaped by the American intelligence.

Turkey’s NATO process, which started in 1952, has been the main factor determining Turkey’s regional and international role for many years, regardless of the political identities of the governments in power, despite the political crises experienced from time to time. However, this long-lasting ’loyalty’ (some would say friendship or cooperation) was severely damaged after the attempted coup d’état against Erdogan’s AKP government on July 15, 2016.

In fact, the Erdogan government itself had come to power with its close messages to the European Union and the United States, and with political steps in line with the interests of the Western camp. However, the Erdogan administration’s enthusiasm for working with the Western camp began to falter to the extent that it conflicted with US interests in the region.

In Turkey’s domestic politics, it resulted in the deterioration of relations between the AKP and its old ’coalition partner’, the US-backed fundamentalist Fethullah Gülen-led movement. (later it started to be defined as a ’parallel state’ and later a terrorist organization). This also helped to boost the break-up with the US.

On the other hand, although the steps taken by the USA on Syria won support of the Erdogan administration on the borders of ’anti-Assad’, the USA’s choice of the YPG for its Syria plans and the large amount of weapons and financial aid it provided became another important factor that spoiled relations. The YPG is considered a branch of Turkey’s long-time enemy PKK and designated as a terrorist organization.

In the same historical period as relations with the United States were strained, the Erdogan administration ’started to explore’ its northern neighbor, Russia. Despite high-tension topics, such as the downed Russian plane and the killing of Russian Ambassador to Ankara Andrey Karlov (these events were described by the Erdogan administration as the activities of the Gülen organization), relations with Russia continued to improve with various agreements, including the most ’shocking one’ for NATO: Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems.

But, when we analyze Turkey’s relations with the USA and Russia from an overview, it is possible to say that the development potential of relations with Russia still depends on the level of tension between Turkey and the US. Even in the S-400 discussions between Turkey and the United States, Erdogan’s administration and its staff have repeatedly argued that ‘Turkey was forced to do this to ensure its own security’ and that the NATO allies, especially the United States, ‘did not act in accordance with the spirit of alliance’.

Therefore, Turkey, despite its potential to be an important partner for Russia, evaluates its relations with Russia in terms of the possibility of severing it from the United States.

What can Turkey do about Ukraine?

On the Ukraine issue, it is possible to see the same attitude mentioned above in Turkish high-level officials, especially Erdogan. First of all, the Erdogan administration, which has assumed the role of a ’regional actor’, reminds that its place on the NATO front is fixed at the end of the day, even though it takes its steps in this direction by using a policy of balance.

Precisely for this reason, it is possible to define it as a ’zigzag policy’ rather than a balance policy.

The Erdogan administration’s first wish for Ukraine is ’no war’. However, Erdogan stated that Turkey is ready to ‘take all steps’ to prevent a war in Ukraine, while at the same time he declared that they ‘respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity’ and ‘always oppose Russia’s invasion of Crimea’. On the other hand, it is an important to note that the Erdogan administration, which does not want war in the region, continues to sell Bayraktar unmanned aerial vehicles to Ukraine.

Again, Erdogan says: ‘We need to tell Russia why some of its demands are unacceptable,’ on the Ukraine crisis, and at the same time criticizes the US and NATO’s weapon aid to the YPG in Syria.

Alongside Erdoğan, another important figure in Turkish politics, Minister of National Defense Hulusi Akar, said: ‘Sharing NATO’s values and responsibilities, Turkey has successfully fulfilled all the duties and missions entrusted to it since 1952. NATO is the most successful defense alliance in history. We believe that the alliance is more active and alive than ever before.’

These seemingly contradictory statements of Erdoğan are not only related to the zigzags between the USA and Russia, but also directly related to his own party and political tradition. ’Americanism’ is still a very strong political trend in Turkey’s political circles. The narrative of ‘Russian politics’’ in Turkey is still heavily influenced by the anti-Russian rhetoric that marked the country’s last 50 years. It is possible to see a considerable level of ’Russophobia’ in Turkish political circles. Therefore, Turkey, which goes back and forth between the USA and Russia, seems to continue to play this balance game for a while.

The Turkish conservative-right politics represented by the AKP often use a phrase to explain this zigzag policy: ‘We will be at every table.’ Acting with this spirit, the AKP administration aims to get the most profit from every table it sits at.

However, it is clear that it is not possible to be at more than one table at the same time, especially in topics such as Ukraine, where tensions rise at critical levels. Moreover, while every actor in the region has their own chair where they can sit safely, Turkey still walks around the tables for now.

Turkey’s stance on Ukraine is critical. But, as NATO increases the level of aggression against Russia day by day, the usual strategy of Turkey, which wants to play a mediator role between Russia and the United States, will not work. The Ukrainian agenda has become too hot to be postponed with the usual peace wishes. Turkey will have to choose a side one way or another.

This goal will never be achieved as long as Erdogan’s administration and AKP, who say they ‘aim to be a playmaker in the regional and international arena’, index Turkey’s destiny to ‘asking for one more chance every time’ from NATO and the USA.

Ankara has waded knee-deep into the long simmering standoff between Russia and the United States over NATO expansion, suggesting that Moscow is being too “one-sided” in its call for a security agreement with the Western military bloc. Turkey, however, a NATO member since 1952, failed to mention its vested interests in Ukraine by way of military contracts that are fueling tensions on Russia’s border.

Following Moscow’s public release last month of a Russia-US draft security agreement, which stipulates that the US “take measures to prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and deny accession to the Alliance to the former USSR republics,” Turkey complained that the document might not be acceptable to both parties.

“For any proposal to be accepted, it should be acceptable by both sides. Russia made some proposals. But maybe NATO seeks the same kind of guarantees from Russia. This is not a one-sided issue,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters.

Ankara’s remark provides a tragically myopic and selective reading of history. The really “one-sided” nature of the standoff involves the 30-member military bloc steadily encroaching on Russia’s borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Despite Western assurances back in 1990 that NATO would not advance “one inch eastward,” today the bloc abuts the Russian border in the Baltic States of Estonia and Latvia, while volatile Ukraine regularly clamors for membership. Here marks the red line that will not be crossed without some response from Russia.

“The United States of America shall take measures to prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and deny accession to the Alliance to the former USSR republics,” the draft agreement reads in no uncertain terms.

Additionally, in a clear nod to Ukraine, the Russian draft stipulates the United States’ commitment not to build military bases in former Soviet states that are not NATO members; not to use their infrastructure to carry out any military activity; and not to develop bilateral military cooperation with them.

It’s important to note that NATO expansion has not been occurring inside of a vacuum, but rather in step with some reckless moves on the part of the United States, particularly its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Signed in 1972, the document imposed strict limitations on anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against missile-delivered nuclear weapons. After George W. Bush pulled out from the ABM in 2001, ostensibly from some “rogue threat” against Europe, Russia was forced to research and develop hypersonic weapons impervious to any missile defense system.

Although Russia has now achieved what even Western observers call ‘superiority’ when it comes to such weapons, allowing NATO to open franchises smack on the Russian border would present a huge challenge to any defensive technologies regardless of its sophistication. In fact, the only way to defeat a threat in such proximity would be preemptively, either through negotiations or otherwise. As military leaders are fond of saying, ‘all options are on the table.’

Unfortunately, however, where the Western capitals see smoke and mirrors coming from Moscow, Russia sees parallels between the Russia-NATO impasse and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

“You know, it could quite possibly reach that point,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said when asked if things could get as far as to repeat the Cuban Missile Crisis. “If comrades on the other side fail to understand us and keep doing what they are doing, we might wake up at some point to see something similar, if that’s what further developments will suggest.”

“That would be a total failure of diplomacy, a failure of foreign policy,” he went on to say. “But there’s still time to try to reach an agreement based on reason.”

Back to Turkey. It’s no secret that Ankara, which has long hedged its military bets between NATO and Russia, has been helping to foment tensions in the Donbass by selling combat drone systems to Kiev. That is a hefty footnote to Ankara’s lecturing of Moscow that got conveniently left out of the mainstream media account.

Ankara’s excuse that this aviation technology is “no longer a Turkish product, but belongs to the country which buys it,” sounds a bit like a drug-exporting country claiming it is not responsible for any ill effects the dangerous contraband may cause abroad, even though it has all of the means at its disposal to halt the exports.

Although every country has the freedom to sell military weapons abroad, to knowingly arm a country in the midst of internal strife – and at the exact nexus point where NATO and Russian geopolitical interests collide – is a monumentally reckless move, loaded with all sorts of potential disaster. Any technological deliveries that give one side in the Ukrainian civil war a perceived sense of military advantage risks, at the very least, fracturing the Minsk Protocol of 2015 that delivered a tenuous ceasefire to the region.

With such grave matters at hand, Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Jan. 2 pledged to improve ties during a telephone call.

After exchanging holiday greetings, the leaders summed up the main results of bilateral cooperation and reaffirmed their intention to further promote the mutually beneficial partnership between Russia and Turkey, the two sides confirmed.

International topics were also touched upon, including proposals to develop legal agreements that would «guarantee the security of the Russian Federation, as well as the developments in Transcaucasia and issues related to the Syrian and Libyan settlement process,” according to a statement from the Kremlin website.

Ankara and Moscow have been reliable partners in the past – most notably in their mutual fight against Islamic State in Syria – and that spirit of cooperation and mutual partnership now appears to be, with NATO and Russia relations on the line, more important than ever.

In recent weeks, Arab countries, as well as Iran and Turkey have all been working out how they can move forward and get along with each other, all due to “sleepy Joe” Biden being asleep at the wheel. Where’s all this heading?

Barely a year in office and what has Joe Biden done in the Middle East? Could it be an after dinner game, like what Europhiles in Brussels play (‘Name five famous Belgians’)? Name five decisions Biden has made in the Middle East?

U.S. presidents can be bold. And they can be wrong. But the worst type are those who are neither bold nor decisive in anything they do. Joe Biden, under the microscope, appears to be a U.S. president asleep at the wheel on so many domestic issues but when we look at the Middle East, it’s almost as though he’s in a coma. And it’s starting to affect how the region operates and how its countries interact with one another.

During Trump’s early days in office, he made a point of doing nothing on the international circuit until the Saudis were ready to accept him as his first official international trip to mark his presidency. The background to this was a strong relationship between Jared Kuchner and Mohamed Bin Salman – the latter installed as Crown Prince by the Trump administration on the condition that a recognition was made of Israel. But the Saudis wanted more. One of the reasons why it took six whole months before Trump made it to Riyadh and ingratiated himself with the cultural histrionics of sword dancing and looking at best ridiculous, was that a second dirty deal was being carved about how the White House would go through with a particularly mendacious ruse against Qatar – which transpired quickly as a blockade on the tiny energy rich state and statements from Trump condemning them for supporting terrorism. In fact, there was even a plan on the table crafted by a middleman working for Blackwater chief Erik Prince, to draw Trump into a plan which would involve a private army overthrowing the Royal Family in Qatar.

The last part of this didn’t transpire as Trump smelled a rat and got nervous at the last moment and the middleman involved, George Nader, soon found himself caught in a CIA trap which landed him in prison and his blueprint for the Qatar invasion scrapped, as part of the Mueller investigation.

For the Saudis, it was nirvana since the day Trump arrived and danced to their tune, even though Kushner was soon to try and capitalize on the situation to harangue the Qataris to invest in his failed New York City real estate endeavours. For MbS in particular nothing could go wrong and the years of fretting over the Obama years seemed well behind them. Finally a U.S. president who is going to show us some respect and give us a much better deal. Indeed, it was rarely pointed out by journalists in the U.S. that the so called amazing arms deal that Trump claimed to have pulled off, was in fact, as Trump likes to put it himself “fake news”. Not only was the figure grossly inflated but it was also not explained to the press that the terms of payment were on the “never never” which gave the Saudis the flexibility to reduce the speed of the purchases and even pull out.

And then everything changed with the Khashoggi murder for Trump and MbS. The Saudi Crown prince was seriously underwhelmed by the Trump response which was barely supportive by any stretch of the imagination.

At this point, relations between Washington and KSA began to sour and in so many ways, what we are witnessing today are rooted here.

Joe Biden came into office huffing and puffing about the Saudis and the Khashoggi murder and how the Saudis would have to pay a price for what was conveniently dubbed a hideous human rights abuse against almost a U.S. citizen.

But the reality is that Biden hasn’t done anything of the sort. In fact, in many ways he has shown that all the ranting and remonstrating about Khashoggi was actually just fake news being created to hit the Trump administration. What we see now is a weak, ineffective and, at times, moronic U.S. president who can barely even remember his own tepid rhetoric on Saudi Arabia and their horrendous, barbarous attacks on Yemenis, even to this day. Just recently, he found himself on the back legs on a deal he signed off to allow more arms sales to the Saudis, despite Congress resisting the deal.

Given the confusion and the dead-dead slow negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, the Saudis are now lost and confused. They can’t take Biden seriously and are almost certainly betting on him not being around for a second term. Bearing in mind that they couldn’t take Trump seriously to help them in their hour of need, amidst talk to possible plots to overthrow MbS, it is hardly surprising that they think of Biden as a fool, who is not worth the time of day.

And so, the recent news that the Kingdom has turned to China to help it develop ballistic missiles really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone given the backdrop of the regime’s worries both domestically and regionally. There have been plenty of warning signs since Khashoggi that the Saudis were shopping around and warming to both China and the Russians as the deal that they had struck with the Americans was very expensive and brought little advantages politically. With China as a partner now, there is leverage towards Iran which, in itself, actually works as a lightning rod to defuse tensions rather than exacerbate them. In fact, relations in the region are generally improving between old rivalries on a grand scale due to Biden’s dithering, as we have just seen a new page turned with Turkey which now is beefing up relations with its old foes in the region like the UAE and Egypt. The fact that Abu Dhabi orchestrated the attempted coup d’etat against Erdogan in 2016 and earlier in 2013 masterminded the successful overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood icon Morsi in Egypt shows security concerns, COVID, domestic woes, Iran’s growth are enough to smash heads together and work out how enemies can seek a workable peace with one another.

Who knows where this all heading, but a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran is not as far fetched as it sounds. Who needs the Americans?

Since the first assault on Turkey’s finances in 2018, which I wrote about multiple times (here, here, and here), I’ve been the lone voice telling everyone that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a lunatic but he’s a lunatic with a plan.

That plan is to de-dollarize the economy of a valuable member of NATO geostrategically.  Since the first shots across the bow by the Trump administration at Erdogan’s toying with those powers east of the Bosporus (Russia, China and Iran) the Turkish lira has been the primary mode of attack against Erdogan.

Erdogan has pursued what has been deemed unorthodox monetary policy since firing his Central Bank during the lira’s 2018 crisis. Then the Bank of Turkey wanted to raise interest rates to 30% to tame inflation. Erdogan, rightfully, in my opinion, stepped in and said no.

Earlier this year he went after Bitcoin exchanges to stem the tide against the lira and buddy back up to Davos a little, but they are more than wise to his game and Erdogan’s reckoning with them was always on the horizon. Today we’ve reached the horizon and the attack on the lira has him in his weakest state politically in all the years he’s been in power.

And with the lira blowing out to 18(!!) versus the dollar this week, Erdogan’s monetary policy has been all the news, especially with him promising to cut interest rates rather than raise them which is the conventional wisdom.

This blowout finally pushed Erodgan to unveil a new package of interventions to stabilize the lira.

The idea that monetary policy should only be conducted on the basis of creating ‘low inflation’ is nonsense, but that is what everyone focuses on with respect to interest rate policy.

It is certainly one factor, and as a committed Austrian in my thinking, I’d rather not even be talking about such things as central banks, monetary policy and what’s a sustainable rate of inflation, since that last part just sounds like a sustainable rate of theft.

But, I digress.

Erdogan was right to lower rates with the Fed raising rates in 2018 and 2019.  His central bank threatened to push rates to 30% and that would have broken the country.  He fired them and lowered rates, defying conventional wisdom.

Stop and think for a second. There is no reason why any currency should carry a 30% risk factor unless the the goal is to destroy it. Because nothing says you have no confidence in your own currency than someone paying 30% to borrow it.

At rational risk levels, where investment returns govern interest rates, yes there can be a somewhat linear relationship between central bank lending rates and price inflation. But to project that linearity, if it exists at all, out to positive and negative infinity is asinine.

I’d rather you think of the efficacy of interest rates vs. inflation as a sigmoid curve rather than a straight line.

If that wasn’t the case then the negative rates in Europe would have produced massive inflation by now and 20% rates in Turkey massive deflation by now.

But neither thing has come to pass because Keynesians, in their obsessions with aggregate demand, ignore both supply issues and marginal demand effects of policy.

In short, there comes a point where models break and the theory proves incorrect. So, with rates at 24% in 2018 not stemming inflation or the slide in the lira, what would be the point of going to 30%? If 30% didn’t work then 40%? 50%?

It’s this strict adherence to dogma which is the problem, as opposed to saying, “Hey, maybe at these rates other factors are more dominant than central bank lending?” That never enters into the thinking of even the most savvy analysts, preferring instead to parrot clearly broken models because it’s easier to throw shade at a lunatic with power (who may actually be right) than think through what’s actually happening.

There comes a point where one has to ask a series of important questions:

1. How did this crisis start?
2. Who benefits from it?
3. What would be the geostrategic goals of collapsing Turkey’s economy?

Because even the smartest, most savvy analysts always seem miss the bigger picture. Zerohedge has missed the boat in multiple articles, focusing on whether Erdogan’s new package of interventions will work or not, given the state of things.

But no one asked the question, “How does a country like Turkey see its currency with some of the highest interest rates in the world already, collapse over a five month period?”

How does something like this start? Without considering what prompted the slide you’re ignoring what causes it to end. Who has the motive to attack Erdogan through his currency?

Frankly everyone. Is there a limit to creating panic? And if that limit is reached what would it take to reverse it?

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

The key thing to remember about Erdogan is the following. Everything he’s done, including taking control of the Bank of Turkey, has been to call out the IMF and the banking institutions of Europe as ravagers of emerging markets like the one he runs.

He categorically ruled out ever taking another dollar in aid from the IMF during the last time the lira was attacked (2019). Remember, as well, he’s convinced (and I have no reason to disbelieve him) that the coup in 2016 against him was orchestrated by the U.S. and NATO, his nominal security partners.

So, there are a lot of powerful people who have a history of wanting Erdogan gone. Now, at the same time he’s done very little to secure friends. But, then again there are no friends in geopolitics, only temporarily aligned interests.

So, after that first attack on the lira which took it from around 1.8 to over 7.0 versus the US dollar and he made nice with Trump, goin on a rampage across the eastern Mediterranean acting as NATO’s spear to undermine Russia’s efforts to stabilize North Africa, most notably his excursions in Libya and continued betrayals of the Russians in Idlib province of Syria.

Last year he backed Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict while selling drones to the UAF in Ukraine which he was then likely framed for encouraging the use of to escalate the conflict there to drive a further wedge between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin, for his part, doesn’t care who rules Turkey as long as it isn’t a NATO satrap.  It’s why he’s put up with Erdogan’s nonsense.  He knows the situation on the ground would result in a Davos-backed ghoul coming to power.

With that in mind, the whys of getting rid of Erdogan are clear. Now let’s go one step further. What does getting control of Turkey mean geostrategically?

Clearly the 1936 treaty of Montreaux, which gives Turkey full control over what ships can pass through the Bosporus and Dardenelles, is the prize here.  Getting rid of Montreaux will allow NATO to bring ships into the Black Sea to ostensibly pressure Russia into giving up Sevastopol.

Good luck with that.

So, with the full court press on against Russia diplomatically by the U.S. with the EU doing its typical “Oh, woe are we, we have to go along with the evil Americans…” bullshit, it’s no surprise to me that Erdogan is under extreme pressure through Turkey’s biggest weakness, its currency, at the same time.

There are no coincidences in geopolitics.

Challenging the Orthodoxy

The collapse of the lira has been epic to behold.  And none of this is a defense of Erdogan per se. He’s a lunatic to be sure.

To create a collapse in a currency as weak as the lira was already takes a small net drop in marginal dollar inflow. Erdogan worked to reduce Turkey’s foreign-currency debt situation, but this was complicated by easy money from the Fed post Coronapocalypse.

De-dollarizing is hard if the country’s accounts are open and the Fed is at the zero-bound.

Once the Fed pulled back on foreign dollar liquidity in June the situation in Turkey was going to deteriorate.

?token-time=1641513600&token-hash=z6OCSUWwCnrnIxxnML_6oFNuYfzF_JdO4urNUyCuib8%3D” alt=””/>

So, is the right response raising interest rates when they are already 1) stifling domestic investment in local currency and 2) retarding savings in that currency because of inflation?

NO. Raising interest rates is a statement by the Central Bank that it has lost the confidence of the market and it has low confidence in its ability to get things under control. Raising rates further only makes that perception that much more ingrained.

Truthfully, when has the IMF ever been right about ANYTHING!?

So, now let’s look at what Erdogan has done over the past three years, he’s run monetary policy exactly opposite of the Rest of the World (RoW).  He cut while the Fed was tightening. Then tightened while the Fed was easing and is now easing while the Fed is tightening (see Chart Above).

During all of this Turkey’s inflation has been crazy. But this is a consequence of zero-bound policies by the major central banks, flooding the world with dollars, euros, yen, etc. Remember, for us to not have inflation at home while printing trillions, the inflation has to be sent overseas.

Money printing leads to inflation always and without fail (Martin Armstrong’s lame protestations to the contrary). The question is where the inflation shows up and does the government include it in the CPI? Lies, damn lies, British Polling and Government Statistics, is how I think the saying goes.

But, back to Erdogan’s unorthodox methods. He actually rebuilt Turkey’s foreign exchange reserves, which no one gives him credit for and brought in more than 300 net tonnes of gold into the Turkish banking system.

Turkey’s current account deficit disappeared and by allowing the lira to properly fall because it was a mess in 2018, it improved Turkey’s trade balance.

Now, one could argue my embedded point above, that Turkey’s currency woes are a function of outside hot money flows pushing and pulling on the lira based on the geopolitics of the moment and say that once Erdogan was a good US lapdog, the pressure abated and nothing he did in 2019-2020 actually mattered.

Fair enough. But, then that begs the question what is he doing now?

And he’s made it clear that the goal is to de-dollarize the Turkish economy. That he’s going to take Turkey on the same path forced onto Russia and Iran in the last ten years — finding ways to be members of the global economic system of trade while using as few US dollars as possible.

Turkey has to do the same thing. And to do that you have to tell people you believe in both the lira and your ability to get things under control.

No Exit?

Erdogan has been fully cut loose by the West and they want him gone.  The polls in Turkey have moved against him and it’s now time for him to put up or shut up.

I said in 2019 there was no easy way out of Turkey’s predicament, that it would not be allowed to leave NATO without a major cost.  That cost will be a short-term hyperinflation of the lira and a radical reorganization of the country’s finances, trade partners and everything else.

European banks are still net short a lot of Turkish debt, blowing up the lira and potentially a bunch of Turkish banks would have big blowback effects on banks like Unicredit, BBVA and others.

That’s all the background stuff. Now let’s talk about what he’s actually doing. And the proof is in the details, which we only got on Wednesday.

The centerpiece of Erdogan’s de-dollarization strategy is a pledge to Turks that it was time to end their reliance on the U.S. dollar as the place to go in times of stress.  He would guarantee their savings in lira if it depreciates versus the rate of inflation.

Through the program, the government will compensate lira deposit holders if the currency’s value depreciates by more than the interest rate offered by banks on these deposits. The objective of the scheme is to stop retail demand for hard currencies like USD and EUR.

Now, many think this is just MMT(no!) or unbacked money printing (yes, but who cares in this world today?).

This is a bluff, ultimately, but given that all fiat currencies are bluffs then, again, so what? Turkish lira deposits are running double digit rates of return and U.S. rates are zero-bound, the question now is will this bluff be called?

Remember, the Fed is draining the world of dollars and has pledged to do so radically.

Erdogan has to do something to put reserves into Turkish banks, i.e. savings, and have that savings begin forming the pool of real capital for lending. And that pool of capital can’t come in from those hostile to Turkey. It has to come from Turks and those that still want to do honest business with them not subjugate them to the mercantilist machination of Malthusian fascists.

The conventional wisdom is that Turkey should be raising rates here to attract foreign capital.  But it is foreign capital that is the source of the lira’s weakness.  Why does a currency halve in 3 months?  Because foreign money pulls out en masse. 

Remember Question #2 above? Cui Bono?

The very people pulling their money out are the ones who run the IMF who then say, “Hey, we’ll give you a loan at reasonable rates to fix your short-term problems.” This is the standard Economic Hitman Playbook. Erdogan refuses to play that game.

The right move is to stiff-arm any foreign creditors dumb enough to think Erdogan won’t punish them, like what China is doing via Evergrande. Expect targeted defaults here by Turkish corporates. Expect favorable treatment by Erdogan for those that no longer have exposure to his enemies.

Because of Turkey’s importance, i.e. access to the Black Sea, he’ll be able to ask for help from Russia and China, who should be happy to help backstop Turkey in their quest to de-dollarize… for a price, of course.

And that price will be doing all trade between the three of them in lira, yuan and rubles… not dollars.  You wean the Turks off easy dollars by backstopping their savings, and cutting taxes on savings as well as investment taxes, which is also part of Erdogan’s package.

Here’s the full package thanks to Zerohedge:

1. A new Lira deposit instrument that will compensate depositors for losses from Lira depreciation. If the loss from Lira depreciation is higher than the interest gain on the deposit, the difference will be transferred to the depositor and will not be subject to withholding tax.

2. The TCMB will offer Lira forward rates to exporters having pricing difficulties due to the exchange rate volatility.

3. The withholding tax on returns from domestic government bonds will be removed. The withholding tax on corporate dividends will be reduced to 10%.

4. Exporters and industrialists will be given a corporate tax discount of 1pp.

5. The state contribution to the personal retirement system will be increased to 30%.

Yes, there are a lot of risks in this plan but only if there is more foreign money to pull out of the country. The reality is that people don’t run on the banks unless there has been an inciting incident to run the bank’s deposits.

And at some point you’ve pulled all the money out, at some point you reach peak panic and all it takes is someone having the confidence to put their ‘tuppence’ back in the bank’s hands. (You had to know I’d work a Mary Poppins reference in here somewhere.)

A Road to Somewhere New?

So, what if we’ve already seen the worst of the situation and the epic collapse both ZH and Goldman are betting on doesn’t materialize? Will someone finally figure out that central bank interest rates and inflation are something other than a linear relationship?

I heard this same crap in 2014-15 when Russia was going through the same blowup of the ruble. It fell alongside oil prices from 28 to 80 versus the dollar. The assault on oil prices was revenge on Putin for stopping the invasion of Syria by NATO. Russia was sanctioned to the point of forcing corporate debt re-denominations because there were corporate bond rollovers due.

This was the same issue that began the run on the Turkish lira in 2018.

Putin allowed the ruble to float freely, Nabullina at the Bank of Russia raised rates aggressively (to 15.5%), they liberalized a lot of the economy spurring new investment and accepted a yuan/ruble swap arrangement to get dollars into the country to assist in the paying out of the corporate debt.

It worked for Russia and I expect you’ll see the next pieces to the puzzle unveiled in due course as Turkey becomes the next node on the Asian anti-dollar currency bloc that’s forming.

Turkey’s debt to GDP ratio is low (39% in 2020). The government has plenty of room to take on the FX risk here and revalue a lot of the foreign currency debt which is the source of the trouble.

That Turkish banks can hold gold as a reserve asset directly means that as we move into a gold bull market thanks to the Fed finally admitting its lost control over inflation Turkish bank balance sheets will offset any lira weakness with gold now that the government has backstopped savings.

You’ll see more investment by both Russia and China in Turkey thanks to the devaluation, increasing tourism and local investment by their people.

There comes a point where you can only hurt a currency so much by pulling out foreign capital.  And once it’s all been pulled out all that’s left is people making do with what’s available.

Turkey is too valuable a piece of real estate and too valuable a partner geostrategically to let fall here. China needs it for OBOR; Russia for holding onto control of the Black Sea and Iran as a conduit through which it conducts trade while under extreme sanctions.

The West is taking a major shot at he Turks here. But the numbers we are talking to backstop the banking system there are peanuts versus the potential long-term benefits of cleaving Turkey from NATO for Russia and China.

I expect some of that newly-freed up capital within the Chinese banking system thanks to the PBoC easing will make its way through swaps into the Turkish system.

The thing is, with a strategy like this, you have to let things get so bad that the currency goes bidless.  Stocks go bidless etc.  It’s only then that you can attract the maximum amount of speculative money into the market as well as give your potential partners the best return on investment if they come to bail you out.

When there’s blood in the streets betting that it’ll become a river of blood is a bad bet. The better bet is that the madness of crowds is in the past and the immense opportunity to clean things up arrives.

This is what China did when they came in to stabilize the ruble in December 2014.  The announcement of a currency swap line arrangement between China and Russia is what marked the end of the ruble crisis.  Any Chinese money that flowed into Russian banks in 2015 did very very well as bond yields fell steadily until 2020 and the Coronapocalypse.

The same thing is going to happen here with Turkey.  And conventional wisdom will be wrong…. as always.

tomluongo.me

By Yeghia TASHJIAN

Under Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan, foreign policymaking in both countries has become a highly personalized and centralized affair.

Given the weakness of institutional agency in current Russian-Turkish relations, it is not clear in which direction these relations would veer in a post-Putin/Erdogan era. Although there are some strategic consistencies, this is still a relationship that is being shaped by events in the field.

The near-term goal for both leaders is a simple one: to uphold a manageable relationship despite many crises and challenges.

According to Arif Asalioglu, General Director of the International Institute of the Development of Science Cooperation (MIRNAS), Russia and Turkey have developed a ‘creative cooperation’ model, where they constructively compartmentalize their relations so as not to allow challenges to obstruct their mutual gains.

In other words, “things that go wrong in one region would not adversely affect good relationships in the other compartment where the relationships are successfully occurring,” explains Asalioglu. It’s a model that has worked, so far.

However, a major issue in this relationship is the thin line between its asymmetric and hierarchical nature, where for now, Ankara geopolitically and economically (mainly energy security) is dependent on Moscow.

At the moment, Russia and Turkey view one another as indispensable partners in managing conflicts in Eurasia. They are able to maximize shared interests while keeping conflicts in check. Despite the mutually beneficial nature of this relation, the future may bring disruptive change as any change of leadership in either country would bring a high degree of uncertainty into the bilateral relations.

To explain this ‘cooperative rivalry,’ one needs only to look at Libya, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh where the ‘frenemies’ have been able to manage their conflicts.

Libya: From conflict to ceasefire

Turkey and Russia supported opposite sides in the Libyan conflict. Ankara supported the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), while Russia, alongside France, the UAE, and Egypt supported the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. Turkey viewed the Libyan conflict as part of a broader power play and geopolitical rivalry in the eastern Mediterranean.

In April 2019, Haftar launched an offensive to capture Tripoli and topple the GNA. Ankara, fearing it may lose Tripoli and its interests in the eastern Mediterranean, directly intervened in the conflict and deployed its Bayraktar TB2 drones against the Russian defense structures. As Turkey stepped in, the balance of power on the ground shifted in its favor. Moscow, fearing Haftar’s complete defeat, staged a diplomatic intervention with Turkey and agreed on a ceasefire agreement between the GNA and LNA, which has held to date.

However, the outcome of Libya’s 24 December presidential elections will determine the country’s direction and whether Turkey and Russia will continue cooperating or clashing in Libya.

Conflict management in Syria

Syria is central to the current shaping of Turkish-Russian relations. The Syrian case is unique as it is a model of partnership and conflict management in which the interests of both countries compete.

With the 2015 Russian direct military intervention in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad, the military tide on the ground changed in favor of the state. In December 2019, the Syrian army and its local, regional, and international allies launched the northwestern offensive to retake Idlib. This operation was only partially successful as the Turkish side once again deployed its Bayraktar TB2 drones.

In late February 2020, after intermittent deadly clashes between Turkish and Syrian forces, Ankara formally intervened in the offensive and announced the beginning of Operation Spring Shield, intended to push Syrian government forces back to pre-offensive frontlines.

To halt further Syrian losses and prevent Turkish advancement, on 6 March 2020, Moscow brokered a ceasefire with Ankara. The ceasefire called for joint Turkish–Russian patrols along the strategic Syrian M4 highway. However, this didn’t prevent the Russian side from bombing the pro-Turkey militias around the Turkish-occupied zones.

In time, the Syrian crisis became a model for the two states to both cooperate and confront their main opponents. For now, Turkey has attained some of its major goals, particularly vis-à-vis the Syrian Kurds, and Russia has emerged as the primary power broker in Syria.

This cooperative rivalry helped both sides to achieve some of their objectives. Viewed from Moscow, Turkey’s participation in the Russian-led diplomatic and military initiatives in Syria has lifted some of the diplomatic burdens and military costs of the Syrian war from Moscow’s shoulders. But the main question now is to what extent the status of Idlib will be frozen, while both Moscow and Ankara work to expel Americans from their occupation of northeastern Syria.

Nagorno-Karabakh: Provoking Russia in its backyard

While both countries ‘understand’ each other in Libya and Syria, Turkey’s aspiration to play a greater role in the South Caucasus has really put this relationship to test. With the outbreak of the Nagorno-Karabakh war, Turkey saw a historic opportunity to exert its influence in Russia’s backyard and recalibrate that relationship in Ankara’s favor. To challenge Russia, Turkey actively provided military and diplomatic support for Azerbaijan in its war against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey’s direct military support in the war caught many parties off guard. Not only did Ankara deploy its Bayraktar TB2 drones, but also its F-16 warplanes stationed in Ganja, while transferring hundreds of Syrian mercenaries to fight alongside the Azerbaijani army. These two factors were a threat to Russia’s national security in the region.

On a diplomatic level, Turkey tried to launch an ‘Astana-style’ diplomatic track to gain primacy over the OSCE Minsk Group whose aim was to encourage a peaceful, negotiated resolution to the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. This process was welcomed by Ankara’s allies in Baku, who were dismayed by the failings of the traditional diplomatic track advanced by the OSCE.

Understandably, an ascendent Russia – well beyond its post-Soviet slump – was not interested in opening up a bilateral track giving Turkey equal status in managing a conflict in Russia’s own backyard. An Astana-style scenario would have legitimized Turkey’s intervention and presence in that geographic area. Instead, Moscow stepped into the fray as ‘big brother,’ and threw its weight into brokering a ceasefire on its own terms.

For Turkey, the outcome of the war was not satisfactory. Ankara had sought a complete Azerbaijani victory, pushing Russia out of the area by instigating enmity between Yerevan and Moscow – or at least deploying Turkish ‘peacekeepers’ in Nagorno-Karabakh alongside Russian forces.

Turkey did leave its mark, though. Despite Moscow’s annoyance with Turkish intervention in its traditional sphere of influence and the breach of some Russian ‘red lines,’ Moscow has had to recognize Turkey as a junior player in the region. This doesn’t mean, however, that it will easily share parity in the post-conflict regional order.

In short, the Russian-Turkish relationship in South Caucasus has been hierarchical. The one mutual gain was to sideline western influence, especially American and French (co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group alongside Russia) clout, from the region’s diplomatic process.

It is worth noting that the future of Turkish-Russian relations is impacted by Moscow’s relations with the west: the more tense those ties, the more Moscow will need Ankara to contain western influence. This dynamic may be boosting Turkey’s regional status, but it also increases its dependency on Russia.

Where lies the future?

Despite the growing areas of cooperation and conflict management between the Russians and Turks, whenever a disagreement has emerged, Moscow has been able to successfully secure its interests and roll back Turkey.

While many, particularly western, observers mistakenly highlight the two states’ increasing areas of cooperation and diplomacy as signs of a foreign policy realignment by Ankara, Russian-Turkish relations are actually more accurately characterized by mistrust and geopolitical rivalries.

What makes this relationship unique is that the two have tried to minimize western influence in their regions, and that Putin has found in Erdogan an opportunistic but pragmatic absolute authority who can quickly adapt to developments in the field.

For now, this asymmetrical relationship gives Russia a clear advantage, even in their commercial relations: While Turkey exports vegetables, textiles, and other replaceable goods to Russia, Moscow provides Ankara with natural gas, oil, nuclear reactors, military equipment, and millions of tourists. In the event of a breakdown in relations, Turkey is far more easily replaced by Russia than the other way around.

Moscow has used its energy policy to win leverage over Turkey. In December 2014, six months after the start of the war in eastern Ukraine, Russia announced its new Turkstream pipeline deal to deliver gas from Russia to the Balkans through Turkey, bypassing the pre-existing pipelines that flowed through Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland to Central Europe. The pipeline gave Turkey and Russia greater influence over Europe.

But Turkey then took steps to diversify its energy resources. During the first half of 2020, Turkey’s natural gas imports to Russia declined by 41.5 percent, compared to the same period in 2019. In contrast, Azerbaijan’s gas exports to Turkey increased by 23.4 percent during the same period. Azerbaijan now occupies the largest share of Turkey’s natural gas market.

This provides Turkey with a better negotiating position on gas pricing than before. It also means that Turkey’s reduction of dependency on Russia could have implications for the future of Russian-Turkish relations.

For this reason, Russia is trying its best to increase its influence on Turkey and bring Ankara closer into its orbit. Russia’s sale of the S-400 missile system and Russian talks with Turkey to design its fifth-generation fighter jets should be viewed within this context. From Moscow’s perspective, these arms sales would deepen splits between Turkey and its NATO allies and weaken the internal cohesion of the alliance. For Moscow, these trades increase Turkish dependency and provide Russia with additional leverage.

In sum, the Turkish-Russian relations, both economically and geopolitically are asymmetric in favor of Moscow. Conscious of this imbalance, Ankara is trying to reduce its dependency on Moscow and challenge it carefully where opportunities arise.

As Russia wants to maintain the political status quo in the region and prevent Ankara from taking any revisionist actions, the interest of both countries may clash again.

However, unlike in 2015 after a Turkish missile downed a Russian jet over Syrian skies, a future confrontation between both states may not take a direct form, but rather an indirect one and in the form of proxy wars, as both sides have ample experience in containing such conflicts.

thecradle.co

Russia is investigating reports of Turkish attack drones being deployed for the first time in Ukraine’s eight-year civil war. The Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) under the command of the Kiev regime claimed that the drones were used earlier this week in combat against ethnic Russian rebels.

This is a potentially dramatic escalation in the smoldering war. For it marks the direct involvement of NATO member Turkey in the conflict. Up to now, the United States and other NATO states have been supplying lethal weaponry to the Kiev regime to prosecute its war against the breakaway self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

American, British and Canadian military advisors are also known to have carried out training missions with UAF combat units. Britain is in negotiations to sell Brimstone missiles to the Ukrainian navy.

But the apparent deployment of Turkish attack drones is a potential game-changer. Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov hinted at the graveness when he announced Wednesday that Moscow was carrying out urgent investigations about the purported participation of Turk-made Bayraktar TB2 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Previously, Lavrov rebuked Turkey to stay out of the conflict and to not feed Ukrainian hostilities.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that NATO’s support to the Kiev regime was posing a direct threat to Russia’s national security. The Kremlin’s assessment can only be more alarmed on the back of NATO member Turkey being now implicated as one of the war’s protagonists. In all likelihood, Turkish military personnel would be required to assist in operating the drone flights.

The war in the Eastern Ukraine region known as Donbass has persisted for nearly eight years. It was triggered after a NATO-backed coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 against an elected government that had been aligned with Russia. The new regime was characterized by anti-Russian politics and Neo-Nazi ideology. The ethnic Russian population of Donbass rejected the Western-backed regime, leading to a war. The ethnic Russian people of Crimea likewise voted in a referendum in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine and to join the Russian Federation with which it has centuries of shared history. Kiev’s forces are accused of aggression and potential war crimes from shelling civilian homes and infrastructure. This week an oil depot in Donetsk was bombed by a drone. It is not clear if the drone was one of the Turkish weapons.

Western governments and NATO accuse Russia of invading Eastern Ukraine and of annexing Crimea. Moscow rejects that as an absurd distortion of reality. Such vilification is no doubt partly why Russia cut off diplomatic links last week with NATO.

Russia says it is not a direct party to the Ukraine conflict. It points to the Minsk Accord negotiated in 2015 with France and Germany which clearly states that Russian is not a party to the conflict. The accord obliges Kiev to grant autonomy to the Donbass region. However, the Kiev regime has stubbornly refused to implement the Minsk deal, even though the incumbent President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in 2019 on election promises to pursue a political settlement.

The emerging Kiev-Ankara axis is not out of the blue. Turkey has been voicing increasing support for Ukraine. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently made provocative declarations about not recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and returning the peninsula to Ukraine.

Last week too saw the visit to Kiev by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during which the Pentagon chief lambasted Russia as the “aggressor” in the Ukraine conflict. Austin also truculently told Moscow that the latter’s red line about Ukraine joining NATO was null and void. As if to underline the Pentagon’s determination, two nuclear-capable B-1B bombers flew from Texas to the Black Sea where they were warded off by Russian fighter jets.

Then there was also the NATO defense ministers’ summit in Brussels last week out of which a new “master plan to contain Russia” was unveiled. German defense minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer went on to say nuclear weapons were needed in Europe to contain Russia. Her comments provoked a furious response from Moscow which summoned the German military chargé d’affaires in protest.

Moreover, it is highly pertinent that France and Germany – the two other guarantors of the Minsk Accord along with Russia – have remained silent despite the continual violations of the ceasefire in Donbass by the Kiev regime’s forces. Every week, there are offensive shelling and mortar attacks across the Contact Line hitting civilian sites in Donetsk. Yet Paris and Berlin keep a stony silence. This is but a silent complicity in condoning aggression.

All in all, the signals amount to a bright green light from Washington and its NATO allies to the Kiev regime to step up hostilities against the Donbass. That ultimately means Russia.

Now with reports of Turkish drones augmenting the firepower of the Ukrainian Armed Forces that evinces NATO effectively at war on Russia’s doorstep.

Turkey’s drones have been deployed in several recent conflicts: in Libya in support of the Tripoli-based government against the Russian-backed forces of Khalifa Haftar; in Syria against the Russian-backed Syrian government forces; in Nagorno-Karabakh in support of Azerbaijan against Armenia. In the latter war, Ankara’s drones were believed to have played a decisive role in giving Azerbaijan the upper hand.

Ironically, when Russian leader Vladimir Putin hosted Erdogan last month in Sochi the two appeared to engage in an amicable exchange. The Turkish president has also recently chafed at relations with NATO over alleged interference in Turkey’s internal affairs. There has been chatter of Ankara moving towards Moscow in geopolitical alignment. That seems way off the mark.

For as far as Ukraine goes, Ankara seems to be setting the pace for NATO’s deepening involvement in the country’s war. Given NATO’s collective defense pact and already fraught relations with Moscow, mercurial Erdogan is tempting a very dangerous fate.

In his 7 October statement renewing US national emergency powers in Syria, US President Joe Biden said: “The situation in and in relation to Syria, and in particular the actions by the Government of Turkey to conduct a military offensive into northeast Syria, undermines the campaign to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, endangers civilians, and further threatens to undermine the peace, security, and stability in the region, and continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

The full statement obviously has several intended audiences, but then quite remarkably, veers to cast Turkey, a NATO ally, almost as an existential threat to the United States. Ankara understands that the exaggerated accusation may be a tactic to keep Turkey from carrying out military operations east of Euphrates River, currently controlled by US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) militias.

But whether Turkey aims to make this move is beside the point. What this harsh White House language seems to be communicating is a US red line whereby the Kurdish-controlled area in northeastern Syria is regarded as a federal district – as in Washington, DC or Puerto Rico. That is the crux of all that matters.

For years, US policymakers regarded Turkish misgivings over this issue as either paranoiac or conspiratorial. When Turkey and Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) signed a multi-billion-dollar energy package in 2013 by bypassing the central government in Baghdad, it was Washington that warned Ankara that such acts could only empower the Kurds’ drive for independence. To note, these contracts eventually did not yield any favorable results.

Fast forward to 2017, when Washington tamped down the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum quickly and decisively. The move made Ankara temporarily cool its concerns over the US’ stance on Kurdish nationhood, but found itself on alert again when the Pentagon began working closely with the YPG militia in Syria.

Turkey argues that the YPG is an extension of a group the US State Department classifies as a terrorist organization: the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The US maintains that its support of the YPG does not indicate hostility toward Turkey, its territorial integrity or national harmony; it merely needs non-US bodies on the ground to fight ISIS and, frankly, Syrian allied forces attempting to recover their resource-rich swathe of territory.

For years now, the American media has glorified the bravery of Kurdish fighters to generate sympathy, and cast Turkey as a racist state prepared to commit cross-border genocide against Kurdish populations. This simplistic approach in shaping people’s perception is one aspect of Washington’s policy agenda. The other part frames the US-YPG relationship as being merely transactional – the YPG maximizes its political and military power and the US scores gains against ISIS and the Syrian government.

The question is whether US-backed Kurdish forces are even an antidote to ISIS. Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford doesn’t think so. “The YPG militia cannot destroy ISIS,” he said in a recent webinar event. “An autonomous (Kurdish) administration is not going to resolve the ISIS problem.”

So then, why does Biden’s administration believe that Turkey undermines US counter-terrorism efforts enough to pose a national security threat? If one examines Washington’s own post-9/11 foreign policy track record in Turkey’s neighborhood, there’s vitually nothing resembling “peace, security, and stability in the region.”

Is Turkey single-handedly responsible for these American failures? No. Could the Kurdish militia pose a threat to Turkey’s national unity and peace? Yes. Does the YPG have a right under international law to defend itself? Let’s get honest here – these NATO allies no longer trust each other enough to look away. And frankly, neither Turkey, nor the US, nor the YPG have the right to invoke international law in their fights against each other inside Syrian territory.

The US-Turkey relationship has never been an easy one due to Ankara’s poor record of human rights and rule of law, and its 1974 Cyprus intervention. These differences have grown in recent years, and include Turkey’s expulsion from the F-35 program, its exposure to CAATSA sanctions, bitter fights over its acquisition of Russian S-400 anti-missile systems, and so forth. But no issue today is of more concern to the Turks than the Kurdish one, and Washington doesn’t want to hear it.

When then-Vice President Biden visited Ankara on August 24, 2016, Turkey launched its Operation Euphrates Shield in northeastern Syria. Whether Biden received prior notice remains a mystery; it was the first high-level US visit to Turkey after the failed 15 July putsch by the Turkish-banned Fethullah Gulen movement (Gulen enjoys asylum in the United States), and perhaps Ankara was feeling vindictive.

“We couldn’t understand if it was an internet game, if it was serious, when it happened,” Biden has said. The again, he also assured Turkey that the US would extradite Gulen if the evidence warranted a trial, and that it would cut support to the YPG if they did not withdraw to the east of the Euphrates river.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with Biden on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Rome later this month, but the way Washington is ignoring him after years of support is making him restless. The inner ranks of the Ankara beltway are still reeling from the speed at which Turkey went from downing a Russian fighter jet for its 8-second incursion into Turkish air space, to purchasing S-400s from Russia the next day.

Given Ankara’s chaotic past decade, nothing is taken at face value anymore. But the US is also no longer perceived as a respectful partner in building democracy and human rights. Today, it is regarded more as a cold-blooded, interest-driven power broker, with little loyalty. While Russia, China and Iran are also viewed as sanguine players, they at least appear to respect their alliances.

Neither of these rising regional powers can single-handedly shape the world order in the way the Americans have done for decades. But, together, they are jockeying to exert influence and maximize their benefits in the wake of Washington’s error-filled, foreign policy decline in influence. The more the US sidelines the interests of its NATO ally in favor of Kurdish militias, the more tectonic opportunities arise for Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran’s benefit.

Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin met privately for almost three hours in Sochi on 29 September. It is in Putin’s interest to exploit or magnify US-Turkish differences to wrench Turkey away from its Western alliance, where anti-Erdoganism creates unprecedented opportunities for Russia. For years, Washington supported Erdogan in power; now Moscow is playing the same game.

The YPG recently killed two Turkish special operations police officers in northern Syria. Since then both Erdogan and Turkey’s Minister of Defense Hulusi Akar have spoken cautiously about their next step. On Friday, the Turkish president promised a “different” kind of anti-terror response in Syria, and took a swipe at the Americans: “The terrorists of the PKK, YPG and PYD are running wild in entire Syria, not only in the northern part. The leading supporters of them are the international coalition and the US,” he said.

It is unclear what Erdogan intends to do next. It could be a limited operation targeting only the Tel Rifaat area – which is under the supervision of the Russians, who have promised to clear out YPG militia. But Moscow will want something in exchange – likely, the complete removal of Turkish-backed militants in Idlib.

However, if Erdogan and Putin reached a comprehensive agreement in their latest bilateral meeting, Turkey could also aim for the area (30 kilometers deep, from Manbij to al-Malikiyah) of Operation Peace Spring, which Biden would fiercely oppose. Or it could do nothing at all. For Ankara, these are not easy times to make hard decisions.

One direction will leave Erdogan stuck with uneasy allies who militarily support his most belligerent foes. The other direction will see him abandoning all hope of territorial gains in the Levant, highlight his decade-long failed investment in Syrian regime-change, and place him firmly back within Turkey’s borders.

President Biden has either misread the tea leaves in the region or actively wants Moscow to exert even more influence over Ankara. Either way, Erdogan may find himself outmatched in the duel between Moscow and Washington. The end game could be a new West Asian order.

thecradle.co