What are Erdogan and Putin thinking when they meet up in person as they recently did on September 4? What are they looking to gain off each other, if anything, that they can’t through intermediaries? What implicit messages are intended for the world – and their own public? Both hail from relatively closed societies – closed by them – especially at the top, thus very little authentic information is made available. Teasing out the truth requires advanced forms of what used to be called ‘Kremlinology’, reading the signs based on years of observation. Luckily this column has done just that for some decades – adduced from field experience reporting on wars and political shenanigans in the region.
Putin and Erdo met in Sochi on the Russian Black Sea coast to discuss the Ukraine grain deal. Putin emerged saying it’s still no go. Erdogan came away saying progress was made. Since both leaders control their media, they can posture publicly in that way without fear of contradiction at home. So, at the very least, it’s a photo-op and a plus for both. Look how world leaders come to pay homage to your leader, is the message, a form of legitimation. The photo-op occurs at a time when Erdogan has ‘won’ a national election and feels emboldened. Putin is slowly losing grip on Moscow’s empire. Usually, on such occasions, the Kremlin boss likes to keep his visitor waiting as a psy-op maneuver up front. He can’t afford to do that with Erdogan, at this point, because real-world consequences would follow – he knows the Turkish prez is a vindictive guy.
What consequences? Who has more leverage over the other? Well, it’s a pretty balanced situation. Turkey allows a lot of dark money to flow to and from Russia. A crucial source of foreign currency. Turkey gets the benefit of Russian tourism that keeps the hotels and restaurants afloat in the midst of severe inflation/recession. The Kremlin, no doubt, has tons of embarrassing communications by Erdo, his family, his party that Russian snooping apparatus has picked up. But he has proved impervious to such leaks from any quarter, having sailed through several down the years. His followers don’t care. Above all, he knows the Russians prefer him to any squeaky-clean fully pro-Western non-authoritarian leader. He’s a man they can do business with, as the saying goes.
He’s also, in many ways, their worst nightmare strategically. Erdo has now signed defense pacts with several of the Central Asian countries, from Azerbaijan eastwards. Ankara is displacing Moscow as the security guarantor of Russia’s underbelly across the ‘Stans, reconstituting a pan-Turkic bloc to counter-balance domination by Russia after some three centuries of Kremlin hegemony. Let us not forget the enormity of that challenge to the status quo – if such a bloc gels it can destabilize other Turkic areas in the Russian Federation such as Tatarstan, Astrakhan, Bashkortostan and the like. China and Iran support Putin in his geo-throttling of Central Asia but slowly, inexorably, they’re losing their grip. And the US is finally getting into the game actively, as this column indicated recently via a leaked letter from President Biden to the President of Uzbekistan.
And then there’s Ukraine. Essentially, the Russo-Turkic tug-of-war over Ukraine is a struggle over domination of the Black Sea. Russian control over Crimea being a central peg. Again, a story of centuries – ever since Turkic ally, the Khan of Crimea, lost power to the Kremlin in the 18th century. These are deep tectonic plates of memory and history and both leaders feel their force when they meet. Putin has suddenly opened disastrous cracks in the Procrustean bed of Russian hegemony by his invasion of Ukraine. It’s an opportunity for Erdogan to write his name in history as the Turkish leader who helped liberate the Crimean Tatar cousins from Moscow’s yoke. And, now, you can understand the full symbolic significance of Zelensky appointing a Crimean Tatar as the Defense Secretary of Ukraine. Ukraine, too, is getting into the game of liberating Crimea from Moscow.
Close to the surface too, no doubt, was the issue of Turkey’s Bayraktar drones. They caused havoc on Russian forces and armor for many months. And then we heard very little about them. Essentially, the Russians had built microwave towers that could detect their signature in advance. They were rendered ineffectual. At the time of the Sochi meeting both leaders surely knew that. But Erdogan also likely knew that Ukraine had identified the towers, perhaps with Turkish help. Recently, at least one tower was destroyed by Ukraine on the Crimea coast and suddenly the Bayraktars were aloft again, hitting targets inland and along the coast. ‘We haven’t seen much of your drones recently,’ Putin might have said, as a humiliating aside. Erdogan might have responded ‘You will.’
Source: Forbes
