Tehran Times

August 22, 2009

Turkey and Russia: Old rivals, new partners

ANKARA (The Economist) — Through the long Ottoman era, Turks and
Russians fought many bloody wars. In modern times Turkey guarded
NATO’s southern flank against Soviet mischief. `The Russians are
treacherous’ is a popular Turkish adage. But one would hardly have
guessed it as the two countries’ prime ministers, Vladimir Putin and
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, splashily signed a raft of agreements in a
ceremony in Ankara on August 6th.

`Treacherous’ was in fact the word some applied to the deal with
Russia’s Gazprom to use Turkish territorial waters in the Black Sea
for a gas pipeline to Europe. The planned South Stream pipeline will
bypass Ukraine, through which 80% of Russia’s gas exports to Europe
now flow. Russia has repeatedly turned off the taps in disputes with
Ukraine, leaving millions of Europeans in the cold. To reduce
dependence on Russia, the European Union has long promoted a pipeline
to the Caspian, Nabucco, which Turkey also signed up for in July. So
whose side is it on?
The answer is simple: Turkey’s. Sitting at the crossroads of the
energy-rich Middle East and the former Soviet Union, Turkey has unique
leverage as a transit hub for gas. And it is unabashedly using the
energy card to promote its membership of the EU. This requires
co-operation with Russia. In exchange for backing South Stream, Turkey
won Russian support for an oil pipeline from the Black Sea port of
Samsun to the Ceyhan terminal on the Mediterranean. It is also said to
have cajoled Russia into lowering the price for a nuclear-power
station. Nabucco and South Stream are not rivals, they are
complementary, insists Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.
The same might be said of Turkey and Russia themselves. With the end
of the cold war their interests sometimes coincide. Both backed the
war in Afghanistan but were viscerally opposed to America’s invasion
of Iraq. Turkey’s image as America’s poodle was erased in March 2003
when its parliament refused to let American troops cross Turkish soil
to open a second front against Saddam Hussein.
A bigger test of Turkey’s stance came in the Russia-Georgia war of
August 2008. Turkey carefully implemented the Montreux Convention,
which governs traffic through the Bosporus, so only a handful of
American warships could enter the Black Sea. Neither Turkey nor Russia
wants the Americans meddling in their back pond.
What do the Americans think? Ian Lesser, an analyst at the German
Marshall Fund in Washington, argues that for now they are not
fussed. `The (Obama) administration is far more sensitive to what
Turkey does with Iran.’ Turkey’s overtures to Russia are seen in the
context of a new foreign policy that involves engaging with all its
neighbors. Europe can hardly cast stones either, as it remains divided
over Russia. Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was present in
Ankara because ENI, an Italian energy company, is involved in the
South Stream deal.
Russia is Turkey’s biggest single trading partner and provides 68% of
its gas. Turkish construction firms are active all over
Russia. Millions of Russian tourists flock to Turkish resorts every
year. Antalya, on the Mediterranean, is home to some 15,000 Russians,
many of them women married to Turkish men. They have their own
Russian-language newspaper and now want an Orthodox church. `Russian
women educated Turkish men in love,’ says Ali Ozgenturk, who made
`Balalayka’, a film about Russian prostitutes in Turkey.
Mr. Putin and Mr. Erdogan get on well. Both are macho, sporty and
prone to authoritarian instincts. Turkey is also one of the few
countries with which today’s Russia feels comfortable, a pole in its
preferred multipolar system, in which big countries pursue independent
policies. Turkey even appears to have colluded with the Russian
patriarch, Kirill, to limit the powers of the Greek Orthodox patriarch
in Istanbul, Bartholomew I, usually seen as first among equals in the
Orthodox hierarchy.
Yet mutual suspicions linger. Russia is unhappy with Turkey’s
indulgence of Chechens. Russia has shut schools run by the Muslim
fraternity of a Turkish imam, Fethullah Gulen.
For Turkey, Russia’s refusal to label Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK) as `terrorists’ is a sore point. It is also wary
of Russia’s show of wanting to help Armenia and Azerbaijan make peace
over Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkish officials say Russia wants to repair
the damage to its image caused by its battering of Georgia. More
likely, it wants to stop Turkey making peace with Armenia. Many
believe that Russian scheming emboldened Azerbaijan to press Turkey
into ditching plans to re-establish ties and reopen its border with
Armenia. This is now patrolled by Russian soldiers, just as in the
cold war.