Erdogan cosies up to Putin as Turkey makes trouble

In an ironic twist, the assassination in Ankara may have brought Russia and Turkey closer.

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul in October. Picture: AFP.

The assassination in Ankara on Monday of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, raises significant geopolitical issues. Will this act of violence break relations between the two countries, isolate Turkey or — counterintuitively — improve their ties? And does this murder affect the Middle East and the world beyond?

Turks and Russians have a long and complex history that starts with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the Russian dream of winning it back for Orthodox Christianity. The two states fought 12 major wars in the 3½ centuries between 1568 and 1918, had a flurry of good relations under Ataturk and Lenin that went south with Stalin, improved substantially in 1991 on the Soviet Union’s dissolution, then subsequently plummeted (2015) and revived (2016).

Generally, Russians have enjoyed the whip hand. They won most wars, occupied most land and came away with better terms in treaties. Turks long ago realised their need of Western support to fend off Russia: thus, they won backing from a four-power coalition in the mid-19th century, the Central Powers in World War I, and NATO during and after the Cold War.

Fear of Moscow has influenced Turks in deeper ways, too, steadily inclining them towards Western ways; of all Muslims, Turks have been the most open to Western influence, from drinking wine to building democracy. A Turk, Kemal Ataturk, not coincidentally stands out as the most influential Muslim westerniser.

These centuries-old patterns remained mostly in place until the strongman Islamist president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, decided in November last year to bring down a Russian war jet for allegedly breaching Turkish airspace. Whatever his reason — perhaps retaliation for a comparable shooting down of a Turkish plane by Syrian forces in 2012 — this capricious act infuriated Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and alienated NATO leaders. Put in schoolyard terms, the little bully misjudged in taking on the big bully.

Erdogan eventually realised his mistake and last June he swallowed his engorged pride, apologised to Putin, humbly visited him in Russia, and partially retreated from those Turkish policies in Syria that contradicted Putin’s. Without betraying affection or trust for Erdogan, the Russian leader absorbed these concessions and resumed co-operating with him.

Then, last Monday, came the assassination of the Russian ambassador at an art exhibition, of all places, made the more horrifying and vivid by a high-resolution video of the violence. The murderer, Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22, made explicit his outlook and purpose by shouting before his own death by gunfire, “We are the ones who obey the call of jihad! Allahu akbar! Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria!” Assuming someone who yells slogans as he murders and is killed tells the truth, Altintas was a Sunni jihadi lashing out against Russian military help in Syria for the enemies of other Sunni jihadis.

As is their wont, the Turkish authorities rushed to pronounce Altintas an agent of a mortal domestic enemy, the Hizmet movement of Fethullah Gulen. Once close allies, Gulen and Erdogan murderously fell out in a tiff over power in 2011. Since then, Erdogan has been trying to crush Gulen and his millions of adherents by blaming every problem on them. Pinning Altintas on Gulen fit that hackneyed narrative and signalled to Moscow that the Turkish republic saw the murderer as their mutual enemy. Putin obligingly responded in kind, ascribing the murder to “terrorism” and not holding Erdogan’s team responsible.

Indeed, in an ironic contrast to Altintas’s presumed wishes, his act of violence brought the two strongmen closer together; a Chicago Tribune analysis finds “Russia reaping political benefits by arguing that it has paid a high price for fighting terrorism as Turkey, embarrassed by its security breaches, increasingly co-ordinates with Russia in neighbouring Syria”.

That said, relations between the two states remain fraught with tensions: historic enemies remember grudges. Bullies cannot form a stable relationship. Opponents in Syria’s civil war cannot smooth over contrary goals. Structurally, Ankara needs NATO; so, talk of its joining the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, the Russian-Chinese counterpart to NATO, appears to be blather for pressuring Westerners.

Karlov’s murder highlights how, as Turks increasingly self-isolate and go rogue, this country of 75 million becomes a leading source of instability. While still a member of NATO, Erdogan’s Turkey now challenges Khomeinist Iran for the title of the Middle East’s most dangerous regime.

Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum.