The rapprochement between Ankara and Moscow is indicative of the rise of Russia’s cherished concept of multipolarity, British journalist and Carnegie Center expert Thomas de Waal writes in his article.
In his words, by their meeting in Saint Petersburg, the two leaders wanted to manifest their displeasure with the West. In particular, “Erdoğan wished to register his disapproval of how Western leaders had not backed him as unequivocally as he had hoped after the failed coup d’état in Turkey in July and of their continued criticism of his authoritarian methods.”
According to the expert, both sides had good reason to make up their icy relations: The Turkish economy badly suffered from the fall in the number of Russian tourists and embargo on Turkish goods, whereas Russia wants to cut its dependency on Ukraine as a gas export route and revive the Turkish Stream.
“Moreover, as has been frequently remarked, Erdoğan and Putin share similar pugnacious personalities and an allergy to the perceived domination of a Western liberal consensus in world affairs. That prickliness also masks a persistent feeling of insecurity. Both Russians and Turks are inclined to think that Europe is unfair to two big countries on its flanks that, as they see it, buffer the rest of the continent from a host of troubles emanating from the East and the South,” the author writes.
In his words, Russia and Turkey are the heirs of the Russian and Ottoman empires, powers that used to be constant rivals and thus it takes more than a single friendly meeting to overcome this legacy.
“They cannot overcome it, any more than either can resolve similar deep-rooted issues with the third big power in this regional triangle, Iran. […] In Syria, the two countries appear to have done a tactical deal to cooperate against the so-called Islamic State in the north of the country, but they are still backing opposite sides in the battle over Aleppo.”
So, according to de Waal, this reconciliation looks more like a business deal with limited aims and an economic rationale than a new strategic alliance.
The author stressed that this way both Putin and Erdoğan “see a world in which alliances like NATO or transnational organizations like the EU are weaker and mean less. The two leaders are more comfortable with a world in which alliances are transient and transactional and traditional great powers set the agenda and reserve the right to change their minds at a moment’s notice if they choose to, while smaller countries have to fall in line.”
But of course, more multipolarity means less multilateralism. If the European organizations like the EU, NATO, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) want to combat the multipolar trend, they need to become more attractive and more inclusive to the nations on the edge of Europe, the expert concludes.
