FROM ENMITY TO PARTNERSHIP

One hundred years have passed since the beginning of the First World War that fundamentally reshaped the political map of the world. Four powerful empires clashed in a bloody battle, killing millions of people. The war did not spare anyone: neither soldiers nor civilians - entire cities and villages with the elderly, women and children were exterminated. All the peoples in the territories that were covered by battles have a terrible memory of the war. This year, many countries mark the centenary of the tragic and heroic events. Someone is trying to rethink the history of their country in order not to repeat mistakes and develop further, others urge neighbours to forget old feuds and become friends for the benefit of their peoples. But there are those who distort history in order to get some dividends, while denigrating their neighbours based on the principle: the worse for you, the better for us.

Over the past century, the history of the First World War has not been studied comprehensively and objectively without nationalistic agony and political intrigue. This paves the way for unscrupulous propagandists to form some myths that are very far from reality.

"I propose to establish an international commission of historians, lawyers, political scientists and demographers to explore difficult issues of the time of the First World War," said the speaker of the Russian parliament, Sergey Naryshkin, on 23 April at the Istanbul conference The First World War - 100 Years Later. On 24 and 25 April, commemorative events were held in the Turkish port city of Canakkale on the coast of the Strait of the Dardanelles, where a bloody military operation took place in 1915-1916.

The Dardanelles operation which lasted nearly a year ended in the failure of the attempt by the Entente countries to seize the straits and lift the blockade of Russia, which needed a corridor along which to deliver military and food aid from their comrades-in-arms in the coalition. The participation in the solemn ceremonies of the victors in this battle was for Russia, England, France Australia and other former participants in the Entente an important step in reinterpreting the lessons of history.

These days also saw a mourning ceremony just over a thousand kilometres from Canakkale for the victims of the same war, who have turned into an instrument for the formation of the greatest myths of our time - the "genocide" of the Armenian people. This is also a difficult issue, a thorough study of which will allow the falsifiers of history to be exposed at last.

The First World War was the starting point for modern Russian-Turkish relations, the 95th anniversary of which was very widely celebrated in both countries. The new states that took shape on the ruins of the Ottoman and Russian empires expressed their mutual desire in 1920 to establish diplomatic relations - on 3 June, the government of the RSFSR responded positively to the appeal of the leader of the Republic of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk.

31 August 1492, when Prince Ivan III sent a message to Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II, proposing to discuss a number of maritime trade issues, is considered the beginning of Russian-Turkish relations. The relationship that evolved between the two neighbouring countries during these 500 odd years was not easy! Former Turkish President Suleyman Demirel is credited with the phrase, which he supposedly uttered in refutation of the well-established myth about the ongoing feud between the Turks and the Russians: "When you start looking at documents and demand specific numbers from historians, it appears that out of the 500 years, they counted 50 years of Russian-Turkish wars. More optimistic historians are talking only about 25 years of real wars. Compared to Europe, and wars in it are almost permanent, it is a trifle that should not overshadow our relations." However, these figures differ widely from other data, according to which the Russian-Turkish wars cover a period of 241 years. On average, one Russian-Turkish war is separated from another only by 19 years. In any case, in the early 20th century, the Ottoman Empire took first place in Russia's foreign trade among the countries of the Middle East and the Balkan Peninsula.

Whatever it was, this relationship cannot be called cloudless. That fully applies to modern history. The Soviet Union was one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with the Republic of Turkey and granted it financial assistance in the amount of 10m gold roubles. Territorial disputes were settled too. The Soviet government ceded the districts of Kars, Ardahan and Artvin to Turkey, while Turkey gave up sovereignty over Batumi in favour of Georgia. Turkish politicians admit that Russian support in those years helped Turkey to preserve its independence in the fight against Greece. In memory of this collaboration, a monument to Russian-Turkish friendship has been erected on Taksim Square. It depicts Ataturk, Voroshilov and Frunze. "The Soviet Union helped Turkey under Stalin too. Many textile factories were created by Soviet specialists," Professor Gokhan Cetinsaya, an adviser to the Turkish prime minister, admitted at the jubilee celebrations in Moscow on 22 April. "Turkey never left Russia in trouble: when there was famine in 1921, Ankara sent large amounts of wheat to its partner. In addition to diplomatic and political relations, educational and enlightenment contacts also dynamically developed at the level of educational institutions."

However, relations clearly deteriorated by the beginning of the Second World War. The first serious problems arose in 1936 during preparations for the signing of the Montreux agreement on the transfer of control over the Black Sea straits to Turkey. And after the war, the Soviet Union as the winner decided to "punish" Turkey for its neutrality and tried to regain once lost territory, and simultaneously, control over the straits. It was planned to hand over the "returned" territories to Armenia and resettle there 350,000-400,000 new immigrants from around the world, who supposedly wanted to return to their land. A committee on the admission and settlement of repatriated Armenians was even established in the Armenian SSR. It is believed that these aggressive actions of the Kremlin prompted Ankara to seek protection from the US and Western Europe and join NATO later.

In 1946, the CIA prepared a report entitled "Foreign and Defence Policy of the USSR", which concluded that "the Middle East region is an ever greater priority for the Soviet Union in terms of expanding its boundaries" than Eastern Europe, because "vital Baku oil - a possible air attack object in a potential war - is located here".

Only after Stalin's death in 1953, did the Soviet government announce its rejection of territorial claims to Turkey. On this occasion, Nikita Khrushchev eloquently said in 1957: "We defeated the Germans and felt euphoric. Turks are comrades and friends. No, let's write a note, and they will immediately give us the Dardanelles. There are no such fools. The Dardanelles are not Turkey, there is a knot of states there. No, we wrote a special note that we terminate the agreement on friendship and spit in the face of the Turks ... It's stupid. However, we lost the friendly Turkey and now we have US bases in the south, which hold our south at gunpoint..."

These American bases are there to this day. But a lot has changed since then. Turkey no longer considers itself a NATO outpost in the Middle East. It has realized that it is a major regional power that is using the convenient geographical position between the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf for its own benefit. The collapse of the USSR also contributed to the strengthening of the regional importance of Turkey. Ankara felt duty-bound to put forward the idea of  unity between the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

The relations of the country with its traditional Western partners are fundamentally changing. It has firmly shifted from the category of a satellite to the status of an equal partner who independently determines with whom to make friends and how. Allowing NATO radar stations that monitor Russia to be established on its territory, Turkey also strengthens its ties with Moscow, Beijing and Tehran. It is even considering the possibility of joining the SCO.

According to political analysts in both countries, political relations between Russia and Turkey did not develop so rapidly in the past because there were no common interests. In other words, in the world of diplomacy, they were not very helpful to each other. Now it seems that the situation is beginning to change. Relations of friendship are turning into a partnership. In November 2001, a plan of action was signed for the development of cooperation between Russia and Turkey in Eurasia, which became a kind of "road map", according to which an agreement was reached not to engage in a conflict no matter what.

Russia is recognized by Turkey as a partner for cooperation, but with certain conditions. One of the Turkish political studies says the following: "In spite of the struggle for spheres of influence, there is no longer a topic that can adversely affect the development of political relations between us ... Russia, as long as it is not in chaos and does not resort to radical changes in its foreign policy orientation, will not pose a threat to Turkey. If this happens, NATO, of which we are a member, will fulfill its obligations under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty of 1949."

Although the two countries do not criticize each other openly for their positions on the situation in Syria, Yemen, Egypt and other countries, incidents like what happened in the autumn of 2012 when the Turkish authorities forcibly landed and inspected a Syrian civilian plane flying from Moscow in Damascus, are not ruled out in the future. It is believed to have caused Putin to postpone his visit to Turkey, which was originally scheduled for October. However, it is almost the only negative incident between the two countries, whose relations are characterized as friendly.

It is no accident that Turkey categorically said no to the stringent demands of its Western allies to support them in sanctions against Russia. Moreover, in the near future it is planned to sign a free trade agreement, which will provide for benefits, the elimination of trade barriers, cooperation in banking and investment. Currently, Russia is the second largest trading partner of Turkey, and Turkey is the eighth for Russia. It is planned to increase bilateral trade from 33bn dollars to 100bn dollars by 2020. This suggests that political differences are not an obstacle to fruitful economic cooperation. The complex and dramatic history of relations between Russia and Turkey provides grounds for optimism, as it shows that even the most serious conflicts that are natural for the real world are solvable if there is mutual goodwill.

The leaders of Russia and Turkey are saying and will be saying at numerous events this year that they attribute their countries to those participants in the World War I events, who learned lessons from it and want to coexist peacefully with their neighbours. The fate of a vast region spanning three continents depends largely on whether these declarations will remain a dead letter or a guide for future action. History should be studied at least in order to be able to predict the behaviour of friends and enemies. Turkey has opened its military archives of the time of that war. Will it stop the myth-makers? Or will they come up with another myth "proving" that the historical documents do not prove anything? In any case, there will be noticeably fewer people who believe them.