/ world today news/ After handing over “Azov” to the Ukrainian authorities, Turkish leader Recep Erdogan made another unexpected move. After demanding Turkey’s EU membership in exchange for Sweden’s admission to NATO, he immediately agreed to another price and now comes to the Vilnius meeting as the main actor. What will they think about it in Russia?
National stereotypes are not always true, and in any case they are offensive to many, but Recep Tayyip Erdogan fits the image of a Turkish businessman too well to ignore. Or more precisely in the image of the director of the central market, where you can buy absolutely everything, including what is prohibited by law.
In the last three days, the Ukrainian authorities – the commanders of the neo-Nazi battalion “Azov”, the leadership of the USA, Sweden and NATO – the membership of Stockholm in the North Atlantic Alliance, have been buying in its market. These deals made Erdogan the protagonist of the world’s editorials and came as a surprise to everyone, even though he bargained loudly for all to hear. True, at the same time he did not reduce the price, as usually happens with Turkish merchants, but on the contrary, he raised it.
Hours before Sweden’s deal became known, Erdogan announced a new condition for its admission to NATO – Turkey’s entry into the European Union, which it has sought for more than a quarter of a century. But in a meeting immediately afterwards with the NATO secretary general, the prime minister of Sweden and the president of the European Council, he agreed to settle for less.
According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Stockholm has “promised to make active efforts” for the European Union to conclude a new customs agreement with Turkey, to introduce a visa-free regime for it and to “intensify the process of acceptance into the EU”. These are vague promises for an unclear future (everything depends not on Sweden and not even on the President of the European Council), but you should not think that Erdogan has sold himself cheaply.
A distinctive feature of its market is that it accepts almost any currency and organizes various types of barter, but the terms of the transaction are a trade secret for the mutual convenience of guests and the administration. And now: only a few insiders actually know what Erdogan got for Azov and the ratification of the agreement with Sweden.
The most popular “outside” version is that these are additional F-16 fighters, as well as parts and support for those already in service with Turkey. All this, of course, will be provided not by the Swedes, but by the USA. Before that, they used to unwind there, thus “punishing” Ankara for buying the S-400 system from Russia. Now they changed their mind.
We will know the consequences later. The Turkish market does not give out its secrets (in some cases it sells them), but the execution of such a transaction cannot be hidden. And it is already clear that US President Joe Biden had a motive to give in to Turkish demands.
The agreements with Erdogan allowed the agenda of the NATO summit to be reversed with the personal participation of both. Now it is almost triumphant – for the operational (most likely already in the fall) expansion in Sweden and overcoming differences with the Turkish allies. And lately, the “most important”, but now scandalous and toxic for Biden, has been pushed to the background.
This is the failure of the VSU counteroffensive, the preparation of which was the main task of NATO last season. It is the satisfaction of Ukraine’s acute projectile hunger with American cluster munitions that has been viewed with hostility by many both in Europe and in Biden’s party (in a sense, in the US Democratic Party).
Finally, it is the lack of unity in NATO on the issue: to give Ukraine legal guarantees for inclusion in the Alliance immediately after the end of the conflict with Russia, or not to give them. Ukrainian President Zelensky demanded such guarantees in an ultimatum, threatening his absence from the summit.
As a result, he still appeared, but for something else – a package of long-term aid and the transformation of the two-stage process of joining the Alliance into a one-stage one specifically for Kyiv. But in general, instead of a scandal and painful calculation of losses, there will already be a picnic with skewers, entertainers and a toast to the director of the market.
This holiday will inevitably be interpreted as a kind of “divorce with Moscow”. A kind of Ankara has finally decided on an alliance with the West and sold “special relations” with Russia in its market. But there is more emotion than truth in this interpretation.
Turkey has long determined its priorities – this is the West. We have a “special relationship” with the Turks, but more like disagreements. Let us give as an example the patronage of the “Ichkerians” – terrorists of Chechen origin, for whom Turkey became a “safe haven” in the early 2000s.
This was before Erdogan. But Ankara’s tricks with the pro-Ukrainian part of the Crimean Tatars and the igniting of an ethnic (Armenian-Azerbaijani) conflict in Transcaucasia in order to expand its influence, as well as a full-fledged war in Syria, where our ally Bashar al-Assad was an enemy, took shape under him of the Turks. Turkey’s sharply negative role for Russian interests in all these cases is unique in its own way.
In a good sense, they confuse with “special relations” the fact that Erdogan always cares about profit, and therefore Russians enter his market on a common basis: both as buyers and sellers (with the help of the Turkish hub we trade, for example, gas). Other customers – “dear guests” from the West, of course, insisted that there be nothing Russian in the malls, but the Turkish president quickly reminded them who is the boss in the establishment. This is why Turkey will not enter the EU. At least not under Erdogan: he does not need limits on his directorial power and the separation of powers with Brussels, where he has long been disliked.
There is no reason for Russia to worry about a break with the Turks: despite the feint with NATO, the EU and the Azovs, the nature of our relations will not change. All this is just a curtain that hides the true parameters of the deal between the Turks and the West. Behind such curtains they often hid our transactions.
Due to the presence of a “gray zone”, the widest selection of goods and the secret nature of services, the Turkish market has acquired special importance for sanctioned Moscow. So she will continue to use it, whether we like Erdogan’s behavior or not.
There is no room for graceful maneuvers and chivalrous oaths in the politics that the Turks have pursued throughout their history. It is primarily a sovereign bazaar, overseen by grim people with scimitars, cutting off the hands of those who planned to defraud the owners. If you don’t like it, don’t use it, but it is more profitable to use it, and profit is the main principle of Turkey.
You cannot buy honor and conscience. But for everything else, Erdogan’s market has it.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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