ERDOGAN’S VOYAGE TO ST. PETERSBURG

The visit of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Russia was one of the most significant political events of the recent weeks, marked by the intensification of regional integration processes. Both leaders have made serious progress on the way of overcoming the crisis in bilateral relations caused by the tragic incident with the shot Russian bomber Su-24.

“The highest interests of our citizens and countries demand for the restoration of our relations”

After meeting with his Russian counterpart and “dear friend” Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, the Turkish President admitted that the shotdown of the Russian plane by the Turkish Air Force was a tragedy undermining the bilateral relations. Apparently, the heads of both countries are ready to revive the closest partner relations between Moscow and Ankara.

Mr. Putin described the reconciliation between Russia and Turkey as follows: “We have gone through a very difficult moment in our bilateral relations but we would very much like to overcome these difficulties in the interest of citizens of Turkey and Russia. The highest interests of our citizens and countries demand for the restoration of our relations”.

A major factor accelerating the Russian-Turkish reconciliation was the support of the legitimate government of Turkey by the Kremlin during the recent attempt of military coup. “I want to stress that this is our principal position, we are always strongly opposed to any attempts of unconstitutional actions”, explained Putin. The Turkish leader thanked the Russian president: “Indeed, your call straight after the coup attempt made my colleagues, our people and myself very glad”.

For Vladimir Putin, the meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdogan in St. Petersburg was substantive and constructive. He has expressed confidence in the availability of full-scale restoration of relations between Moscow and Ankara. The Russian president has underlined that the Russian-Turkish relations are getting better and will soon reach the pre-crisis level. “We are determined to restore our relations to the pre-crisis level and beyond. We have the political will to do so. I think that our respective societies expect us to do just that”, said Mr. Erdogan.

Meanwhile, the Russian leadership has made it clear that relations with Turkey will recover gradually. Moscow has lifted the ban on selling package tours for Russian tourists visiting Turkey. The negotiations on the abolition of visa regime for the Turkish nationals imposed after the incident with military aircraft will be held in the near future. Russia also plans to lift the embargo on import of the Turkish agricultural products by the end of this year.

As became clear after the negotiations between Putin and Erdogan, both countries prepare to recover the commercial-economic and scientific-technical cooperation. The priority economic goal has remained the same, which the parties have set before the incident with the downed Su-24. It is about achieving the trade turnover between Russia and Turkey to the level of $100 billion annually.

An important result of the Russian-Turkish summit was the fact that President Putin and Erdogan instructed the appropriate agencies of their countries to organize a joint meeting of the Strategic Planning Group during the first half of 2017. Both sides have reached significant agreements on the restoration of a number of major joint projects. First of all, this concerns the Turkish Stream, which envisages the construction of the natural gas pipeline under the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey. According to Putin, this project is unquestionable in terms of the Russian gas supplies to Turkey. Erdogan has also assured that Ankara will provide Russian gas supplies not only for Turkey but also to European consumers.

As for the construction of the Akkuyu nuclear plant by the Russian scientists, Mr. Erdogan announced the intention of Ankara to grant the project a status of “strategic investment”, and this will happen “as soon as possible”. “We raised the issue of designating it a strategic investment project, which met with a positive response today”, confirmed the Russian president.

Another important consequence of reconciliation between Turkey and Russia could be the use of their national currencies in bilateral trade. President Erdogan has acknowledged this possibility adding that the use of national currencies instead of the dollar would be beneficial for both Russia and Turkey.

Other major forces in world politics, especially the United States and the European Union, closely watch the rapid restoration of strategic partnership between Moscow and Ankara. The West does not hide its concern over the fact that Russia and Turkey, the two Eurasian powers, rejected by the Euro-Atlantic community as equal partners, are making life-changing steps toward each other.

The West is concerned

The confrontation between Russia and the West can be traced back to the Soviet period while the symptoms of a serious dissension between Turkey and the US-EU tandem are relatively fresh. In recent years, Erdogan has been making intensive efforts to diversify Turkey’s foreign policy and to shift the priorities, based on an alliance with the West for decades, in the direction benevolent for expanding the Turkish influence on the Middle East and the partnership with Russia. The West is not pleased with such a tendency but, at the same time, the unwillingness of the EU to admit Turkey as a member state contributes to distancing the West from Ankara.

The relations between Ankara and the West have seriously deteriorated after the failed coup attempt in Turkey. The Turkish leaders accuse the Muslim preacher Fethullah Gülen living in the US of organizing the coup. According to Ankara, all threads from the military coup, which was averted only thanks to the support of the majority of the Turkish people of the legitimate government, lead to the United States. Meanwhile, Erdogan also accuses not only the supporters of Gülen but the US military. This is a serious test for the relations between Ankara and Washington. In fact, Erdogan has made an ultimatum to the States to choose between Turkey or Gülen’s terrorist organization. In relations with Europe, Ankara threatened to withdraw from the migration agreement with the EU, if Brussels did not cancel the visa restrictions for Turkish nationals.

The deepening crisis of relations between Turkey and the West can also concern NATO. The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has warned that Turkey could seek for possible cooperation partners in the defense industry outside of NATO. Given that the statement was made immediately after Erdogan's visit to St. Petersburg, we can assume that this implies a possibility of strategic reorientation to Russia. Although it is very difficult to imagine the leave of Turkey from NATO or the break of Ankara’s military ties from the leading Western powers, the trend of deteriorating relations between the both parties, mainly caused by the reluctance of the Euro-Atlantic community to deal with Turkey as with an equal partner, may well lead to such consequences.

The Syrian Case

Speaking about the consequences of the recent visit of the Turkish President to Russia, which marks the beginning of a new upsurge in bilateral relations, it is worth noting that a successful dialogue between Ankara and Moscow will undoubtedly improve the security and cooperation in the neighboring regions, in particular the Middle East and the South Caucasus.

It is important to consider the Middle Eastern aspect of the Russian-Turkish cooperation from the perspective of the Syrian settlement. Both Russia and Turkey wish to see Syria as an integral state. The difference in their positions concerns the perspectives of the current Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in the future of Syria. Meanwhile, the US and the West support the scenario, which implies the collapse of Syria mainly with the support of Kurdish organizations seeking autonomy for Syria's Kurdish-populated areas. This factor is completely unacceptable for Turkey, which has been leading the fight against the Kurdish separatists and terrorists for years.

Although the Turkish president has a reputation of a categorical opponent of saving al-Assad’s power in Syria, Turkey's interests call for the preservation of an integral Syrian state. This coincides with the Russian position, even though Russia is objectively strengthening Bashar Assad's regime through squeezing out the so-called Islamic State (IS) from the Syrian territory. It is, therefore, no surprise that Erdogan has admitted the impossibility to solve the Syrian problem without the participation of Russia and the Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik has announced the intention of his government to cooperate with Moscow on this issue. According to Isik, the leaders of Russia and Turkey has reached an agreement on such cooperation during the recent negotiations. Ankara's proposal on joint operations against the IS terrorist groups with Moscow should be considered within the same context.

It is also possible to create a joint format for Russia, Turkey, and Iran that would ensure the solution of the Syrian problem based on the principle of maintaining an integral state of Syria. Given the outcomes of the recent trilateral meeting in Baku between Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan, as well as the role of Azerbaijan as a regional hub for building good-neighborly and partnership relations between Turkey and Russia, Turkey and Iran, the experts admit that Baku can well become a common ground for Moscow, Ankara and Tehran, including the settlement of the bloody Syrian crisis.

In St. Petersburg, the Turkish President said it was possible to set a trilateral format for negotiations between Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Russia. He has discussed this issue with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. This means that the integration processes in the South Caucasus, where Azerbaijan plays one of the leading roles, continues to gain momentum.

“Today, my dear friend Vladimir Putin and I have confirmed the similarity of our positions on normalising relations. We should use the capabilities of our countries to enhance regional stability”, said President Erdogan.

Of course, the intensification of integration processes, the development of full-fledged cooperation in the South Caucasus and the neighboring regions are complicated due to territorial conflicts. In this respect, particular importance is attached to the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Undoubtedly, the establishment of strategic partnership between Russia and Turkey can play a positive role in resolving the Karabakh conflict, which is possible only if the Armenian occupation of the Azerbaijani territories is stopped. That is why Armenia is not pleased with the Russian-Turkish rapprochement; being an aggressing country, it tries to use the alliance with Moscow to preserve the status quo in the conflict region. A comprehensive cooperation between Russia and Turkey may become one of the guarantees that the destructive policy of Armenia, which is contrary to the interests of regional peace and stability, will suffer a complete collapse soon or later.