{"id":465387,"date":"2019-07-15T14:47:03","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T14:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mecouncil.org\/?p=465387"},"modified":"2022-09-21T06:08:36","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T06:08:36","slug":"why-is-turkey-betting-on-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/why-is-turkey-betting-on-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is Turkey betting on Russia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On June 6, then-Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan sent<\/a> a strongly-worded letter to his Turkish counterpart over Turkey\u2019s planned purchase of S-400 air defense system from Russia. The letter outlined a timeline to remove Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet program, should Turkey move forward with the purchase. Washington argues that if installed in Turkey, the S-400 system will compromise the F-35 technology.<\/p>\n

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan chafed<\/a> at threats of sanctions and said that the S-400 purchase is a done deal. And indeed, last week<\/a> Russia began delivering the system to Turkey.<\/p>\n

As U.S.-Turkey relations are headed for further downturn, Erdo\u011fan appears<\/a> to have pinned his hope on President Trump in order to avoid U.S. sanctions. In fact, Erdo\u011fan came out of his meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Japan at the end of June satisfied, as Trump put<\/a> the blame for the S-400 crisis on Obama administration and\u2014in contrast to the messages from elsewhere in the U.S. government\u2014gave the impression that he doesn\u2019t favor putting heavy sanctions on Turkey over the issue.<\/p>\n

It is, nevertheless, perplexing to observe how Russia is reshaping U.S.-Turkey relations.<\/p>\n

A NEW CHAPTER<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It was the Soviet threat that gave birth to the U.S.-Turkey alliance. Through economic and military aid, President Harry Truman tried to prevent Turkey and Greece from falling under Soviet influence in 1947. With a twist of irony, it is now Russia that may break this alliance.<\/p>\n

As the purchase of S-400 missile system illustrates, there has been an important change in tide, both in U.S.-Turkish and in Turkish-Russian relations.<\/p>\n

Defying expectations, Turkey and Russia have fast deepened relations on multiple fronts in recent years. Syria was a magnet that Russia used to lure in Turkey. What started as a pragmatic engagement between the sides within the context of the Syrian crisis has already gone beyond Syria. Few predicted that Turkish-Russian courting could survive Syria\u2019s ever-complicated crisis. Yet thus far, the relationship has survived and even further improved.<\/p>\n

Such negative expectations for the future of Turkish-Russian relations were not baseless. Geopolitically, the two countries are on opposite sides of the spectrum on almost all issues in their shared neighborhood. Likewise, both countries\u2019 local and regional alliance structures remain at cross-purposes. Recognition of Russia\u2019s geopolitical ambitions, particularly towards the Eastern Mediterranean, was one of the major factors that drove Turkey to seek membership in different Western clubs.<\/p>\n

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WARMING TIES BETWEEN ANKARA AND MOSCOW<\/strong><\/h2>\n

So why is Turkey now seeking to form a partnership with Russia?<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s military involvement in the Syrian crisis and Turkey\u2019s subsequent shooting down of a Russian jet in the fall of 2015 were the crucial turning points. With the former, the regime-change scenario in Damascus has further faded from the horizon; with the latter, Turkey was effectively pushed out of the Syrian scene. By then, the West had already given up on the regime change in Syria, and the Kurdistan Worker\u2019s Party (PKK)-affiliated Syrian Kurdish People\u2019s Protection Units (YPG) was fast gaining territorial control and political influence in Syria. In response, Turkey also set aside its regime-change goal, mended relations with Russia, and focused on curtailing Syrian Kurdish gains instead. This bet paid off. With Russian approval, Turkey undertook military operations in northwestern Syria, driving YPG forces east of the Euphrates river.<\/p>\n

Yet such pragmatism wasn\u2019t the only factor that has shaped the Turkish-Russian engagement since then. The U.S. is the invisible third party that shapes its trajectory.<\/p>\n

Divergence and decoupling have been the dominant forces of U.S.-Turkey relations in recent years. Putting aside diplomatic courtesy, officials from both sides have thrown accusations and threats at each other. Turkey reprimands the U.S. for supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces, and the U.S. is increasingly vocal in its criticism of Turkey\u2019s relations with Russia and Iran, as well as Ankara\u2019s policy towards Syria. The name of the U.S. sanction that Turkey is facing as a result of the S-400 purchase\u2014Countering America\u2019s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CATSAA)\u2014is telling. The level of trust between the two sides is at a historical low. Institutional ties are fraying, particularly at the military-to-military level. The Turkish public, political elites, and policymakers increasingly view the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) as a menacing force.<\/p>\n

In April, Vice President Mike Pence asked<\/a> Turkey to make a choice between NATO and Russia. Preferring strategic autonomy in both foreign and security policy, Turkey doesn\u2019t want to make such a choice. It explores ways to reconcile its NATO membership and historical ties to the West with its improving relations with countries such as Russia, China, and Iran.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t just that Turkey believes that the U.S. isn\u2019t very receptive to its interests: Turkey also thinks U.S. policy toward the Eastern Mediterranean directly undermines Ankara\u2019s regional role. The Senate\u2019s adoption of the \u201cEastern Mediterranean Security and Partnership Act<\/a>\u201d further aggravates Turkey\u2019s fears that U.S. policy in the region, whether by design or by accident, culminates in a hard containment of Iran and soft containment of Turkey. Traditionally, Turkey was in fact one of the linchpins of U.S. policy towards Eastern Mediterranean. But this bill<\/a> advocates lifting the arms embargo on Cyprus (first instated in 1987) and envisages Greece, Cyprus, and Israel as the new linchpins of U.S. policy towards the region. In this regard, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo\u2019s attendance<\/a> at the Israeli-Cypriot-Greek tripartite meeting on energy and security in the Eastern Mediterranean in Israel in March further contributes to Turkey\u2019s fears. This and similar initiatives will further convince Turkish decisionmakers that the U.S. is pursuing a double containment strategy of Iran and Turkey. Not only will this make Turkey less cooperative towards any U.S. policy on Iran, but it will also further motivate Turkey to work even more closely with Russia and Iran.<\/p>\n

CAN THE U.S.-TURKEY FRIENDSHIP BE REKINDLED?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Turkey\u2019s newly found partnership with Russia is still fragile and evolving. The Russian-backed Syrian regime\u2019s recent offensive<\/a> on Idlib province in Syria glaringly illustrated the limits of Russian-Turkish cooperation in the Middle East and beyond.<\/p>\n

Their relationship is no match for Turkey\u2019s historical and institutional ties to the West. Yet these ties are fraying. A heavy set of U.S. sanctions on Turkey in response to Turkey\u2019s purchase of the S-400 missile system may\u00a0have the unintended consequence of making Turkey even more dependent on Russia. In this scenario, this deal will further turn into a choice of geopolitical realignment for Turkey, away from the West and closer to Russia. And peeling Turkey further away from the West and undermining NATO are precisely what Russia covets. Such a realignment will make Turkey even more introverted and democratically retrograde, and serve neither Turkish nor Western interests. This is the prospect that Turkish and American officials should prevent at all cost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On June 6, then-Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan sent a strongly-worded letter to his Turkish counterpart over Turkey\u2019s planned purchase of S-400 air defense system from Russia. The letter outlined a timeline to remove Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet program, should Turkey move forward with the purchase. Washington argues that if installed in… Continue reading Why is Turkey betting on Russia?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":465388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication_archive_type":[297],"class_list":["post-465387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","publication_archive_type-issue-brief","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465390,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465387\/revisions\/465390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465387"},{"taxonomy":"publication_archive_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_archive_type?post=465387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}