What Erdoğan does – similar to his role model Sultan Abdulhamid II – is play Russia against the West, and vice versa, in pursuit of maxi­mum strategic autonomy. free” to “not free”. May 2020, Biden appoints staunch Turkey critic Brett McGurk to National Security Council. Ankara remains part of NATO and the EU’s Customs Union. Turkey, Russia maintain delicate balance in three hotspots. © Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2020. Erdoğan controls state resources, major parts of the media, and, most impor­tantly, the Supreme Election Council. Such support should not be only at the discourse level, but must be augmented by concrete measures to support pro-democ­racy forces in Turkey. oligarchs, the siloviki (security elite), and civilian technocrats. Putin and Erdoğan have turned into a diplomatic double act, with the recent agree­ment for a ceasefire in Idlib being the latest example. It has a relatively more com­petitive political system shaped by decades of democratic development. Op­po­sition parties were co-opted by the Krem­lin while opponents, such as oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, had their business empires destroyed and assets redistributed to pro-regime tycoons. European support for Turkish democracy matters. Days before, on 11 February, magistrates in the Russian town of Penza sentenced seven young left-wing activists to 6 to 18 years in prison. Through economic and military aid, President Harry Truman tried to prevent Turkey and Greece from falling under Soviet influence in 1947. Although Russia will remain authori­tarian for some time to come, Turkey is approaching a historic crossroad: Either authoritarianism will be consolidated or some sort of return to parliamentary de­mocracy will prevail. EU foreign policy, In contrast to Russia, Turkish elections are contested and, as the 2019 local polls demon­strated, the opposition has a chance to win. Turkey can ensure its territorial integrity only in cooperation with Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Russia and eliminate the threat from the United States. "Relations between Russia and Turkey are self-sustainable and self-sufficient; they don’t depend on someone’s aggressive and hostile actions and whims," Lavrov said on Tuesday. Turkey is not likely to consolidate as an auto­cratic system, even though such an out­come cannot be dismissed altogether. Politically, the two countries have a similar reading of world affairs, based on suspicion of and frustration with the West; both have an interest in maintaining a multipolar world order that helps them pursue their respective ambitions. Opposition parties (CHP, HDP, and the Iyi Party) are relatively strong in Turkey, despite suppression. For further information on our quality control pro­cedures, please visit the SWP website: https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/about-swp/ quality-management-for-swp-publications/, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Ludwigkirchplatz 3–410719 BerlinTelephone +49 30 880 07-0Fax +49 30 880 07-100www.swp-berlin.orgswp@swp-berlin.org, Dimitar Bechev, Their core messages converge: first, that strong leadership is essential for bet­tering ordinary citizens’ lives, delivering eco­nomic growth, and ensuring stability; second, that the Motherland, whether Russia or Turkey, is under threat from “foreign” – read Western – and “domestic enemies” sowing disunity to prevent its rise in the in­ternational arena. It was the Soviet threat that gave birth to the U.S.-Turkey alliance. Turkish-Russian joint center to be ready in 2 weeks Anadolu Agency 16:48 31-Dec-20. But the joy of those who welcomed the release proved short-lived. And Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile batteries in 2017 shows that military-industrial cooperation is strong, greatly displeasing the US. But, at the same time, their willingness to use military force has seen them sideline EU and Nato powers in the principal conflicts shaping competition for power in the Mediterranean. … It opened up its political system, abolishing one-party rule after the Second World War. Both espouse a vision of a multipolar world free of US hegemony. Russia and Turkey seem to be in agreement to remove us from Ain Issa and its surrounding areas. They have access to resources, experience of governance at the local and, historically, national levels, and robust links to their relative electorate, which turns out en masse at the ballot box. European decision-makers must look beyond the nativist populism of Erdoğan and recognise that a considerable part of the country no longer supports an executive presidency, but rather prefers a return to parliamentary democracy. Over the past years, economic stagna­tion, anti-elite sentiment, and traditionally low levels of trust in public institutions have eroded the regime’s legitimacy. Their trade partnership was worth $26.1bn in 2019. and centres on tourism and agriculture: 6.7 million Russians visited Turkey in 2019. and Turkey will be the world’s second largest importer of Russian agro-industrial products in 2020. Dimitar Bechev is Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.Suat Kınıklıoğlu is a Fellow at the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) at SWP. For both of them, rally­ing the public behind the flag, with help from loyalist media, became the strategy of choice. For decades, parties of various ideological stripes have vied for votes in competitive elections, bargained, and entered into coalitions to share spoils and governance responsibilities. In this tug of war for Turkey, Russia has positioned itself as a more pragmatic, predictable and “delivering” partner than the United States. mentary elections and even capture a ma­jor­ity of seats in the Grand National Assem­bly. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants Turkey to regain its strategic role in North (...). At a time when Russia and Turkey are engaged in a wide range of economic and military projects—the South Stream pipeline, joint development of the S … Turkey and Russia are often portrayed as two authori­tarian regimes led by strong leaders who favour an omnipotent state at the expense of fundamental freedoms and liberal democratic institutions. The Kremlin propaganda machine blew this argument out of pro­portion after Putin’s 2012 return to the presidency, and especially with the seizure of Crimea and the war in Ukraine. Libyan News Agency (LANA) 17:21 31-Dec-20. Political rights and civil freedoms thrived as never before in the 90s, yet the presidency dominated other branches of government, with Yeltsin being dependent on oligarchs and special interests. Turkey draws road map with Egypt, but will Cairo follow it? Rather than deliver justice, the court’s mission appeared to be stamping out dissent. But the regime has applied the same tactics much more sparingly in western Turkey. In the Turkish version of the events, Russia has essentially accepted, willy-nilly, Turkey as a co-equal in the South Caucasus, which is supposedly part of Moscow's "near abroad." Yet there appear to be striking parallels throughout the twentieth century in the ways Russians and Turks conceived of the relationship between religion and modernity. The two countries have built a geoeconomic partnership based on natural gas and nuclear energy projects. Turkey also defied Russia by using drones and mercenaries to recently help Azerbaijan reconquer the Nagorno-Karabakh region from Armenia. Turkey found itself seeking loans or swap deals from the US and UK and hinted at freezing the deployment of the S-400 air defence system. Russia’s Rosatom is building Turkey’s first nuclear power station at Akkuyu, at a cost of $25bn. Russia has almost no democratic record. Most read . Putin and Erdoğan have managed to keep conflicts under a lid and maximise overlapping interests. Then, in the 1996 presidential elections, large-scale manipu­lation prevented the transfer of power to Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Com­munist Party of the Russian Federation. (4) See Fiona Hill and Omer Taspinar, ‘Turkey and Russia: Axis of the excluded?’, Survival, vol 48, no 1, London, 2006. Erdoğan, too, has been rallying the public behind the flag for years: holding mass rallies during the Mavi Marmara crisis, which aimed at breaking Israel’s embargo on Gaza in 2010, labelling Gezi Park protests a foreign con­spiracy, blaming the US for the 2016 coup attempt, and intervening in Syria to fight the outlawed PKK. Russia adopted a new constitution that enhanced the role of the executive. Turkey considers the Kurdish militia YPG, the leading element in the SDF, to be part of the Turkish Kurdish insurgency PKK. Electoral success propelled Erdoğan to power and ultimately enabled him to elimi­nate constraints to his rule. The EU has separate sets of relations with Russia and Turkey. World An Assertive Turkey Muscles Into Russia’s Backyard Erdogan extended support for Azerbaijan’s military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, a rare foray into Kremlin’s sphere of influence Faced with civic protests in 2011–2, the regime grew more repressive. Today Turkey and the United States are on hostile fronts. However, Russia as well as Turkey have proven flexible in their day-to-day conduct­ing of foreign policy. Con­stitutional changes in Turkey, in force since 2018, transferred all essential powers to President Erdoğan. Russia was demoted back in 2004, at the end of Putin’s first term. Russian Federation, Strategic partnerships, Still, military tu­telage al­lowed for free and sufficiently fair elec­tions, a robust media, and civil society. Although Russia and Turkey are rivals in several conflicts, including Libya and Syria, Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan seek to maintain good relations. The construction of the Turkish-Russian joint monitoring center will be completed in two weeks, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Dec. 31. Putin fails to inspire much enthusiasm, but a majority of citizens see no credible alternative. The Turkish oppo­sition has adapted and learnt to compete under the presidential regime: coordinating electoral strategies, fielding joint candidates, setting aside ideological differences, etc. Turkey has no expansionist goals. Turkish-Russian joint center to be ready in two weeks: Aliyev BAKU- Anadolu Agency. Though Putin’s regime is resilient, consti­tu­tional amendments do show it is concerned about its long-term survival. Hence, it is critical to understand the gravity of the current time frame and take a pro-active stance in favour of Turkish democracy. These two stories lay bare the unnerving similarities between Turkey and Russia. The Russo-Turkish wars (or Ottoman–Russian wars) were a series of twelve wars fought between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 20th centuries. Russia was demoted back in 2004, at the end of Putin’s first term. On 17 February 2020, a court in Istanbul acquitted prominent philanthropist Osman Kavala, who was accused of attempting to overthrow the Turkish government by organising the 2013 Gezi protests. Their relationship is all about spheres of influence and balances of power, and their ambitions have brought them into conflict from North Africa to the Caspian, via the Levant and the Black Sea. Though, overall validity of the vote was only seriously, etc. In the 2000s, Putin changed the rules, becoming an indispensable arbiter for clans in government: e.g. State and society of a country / a region, Since Turkey’s controversial acquisition of the S-400 missile system from Russia, the narrative that the EU is facing a twin challenge from the East has been gaining currency in European capitals. However, the Bolshe­vik takeover in 1917 put an end to gradual liber­alisation. Ankara is not coming into Mos­cow’s geopolitical orbit either. While the West was struggling to respond to the crisis, Turkey seemed to distance itself form its allies when it asserted the primacy of the Montreux Convention. In Russia, Putin has amended the constitution so as to be eligible to rule for another two six-year terms after 2024. Rather than an outpost of NATO or an eternal EU membership candidate, Turkey sees itself as an autonomous power whose writ runs from Libya to Syria and from Sudan to the Gulf. Turkey is relatively new to elec­toral fraud. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrive for a news conference at the Kremlin, Moscow, March 5, 2020 (AP pool photo by Pavel Golovkin). In 1993, President Boris Yeltsin used the armed forces to storm and dis­solve the opposition-run legislature. 4 Pages, taken back into custody, this time on charges. Russian Foreign Minister Calls on UN to Fill UN Special Representative Post Vacancy. Hence, the EU should strongly support pro-democracy forces in Turkey by increasing its support for civil society, intellectuals, and the remaining independent media. The report said Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey and Jordan were all violating a U.N. arms embargo on Libya by ferrying military equipment and supplies to … AKP-friendly businesses gradually took ownership of major media. Turkey and Russia are a like a couple, fighting and making peace time and again. Elites in both countries tend to espouse strong anti-hegemonic in­stincts, believe in state strength, and often resort to nationalism and religious con­servatism to draw a line against the West. Yet, putting these two countries into the same basket and formulating policies accordingly is problematic. "Russia and Turkey coordinated their efforts to undermine the SDF, even when the tensions between the two countries had escalated after the shootdown of a Russian Su-24 aircraft. Defying expectation… Although there were impropri­eties in the Ankara election in 2014, the overall validity of the vote was only seriously questioned in the constitutional referen­dum of April 2017. It was one of the longest series of military conflicts in European history. Suat Kınıklıoğlu, SWP Comment 2020/C 24, From an arbiter, he morphed into a quasi-monarchical figure. Likewise, Rus­sia considers Turkey a partner, even though their policies may be at odds, as in Syria and Libya. Political pluralism resurfaced only during perestroika of the 80s and in the early 90s with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the birth of the Russian Fed­eration opening new opportunities. Their trade partnership was worth $26.1bn in 2019. and centres on tourism and agriculture: 6.7 million Russians visited Turkey in 2019. and Turkey will be the world’s second largest importer of Russian agro-industrial products in 2020. In Moscow’s city elections last September, Navalny’s candidates were banned from running. As the purchase of S-400 missile system illustrates, there has been an important change in tide, both in U.S.-Turkish and in Turkish-Russian relations. The US has issued sanctions against its fellow Nato ally Turkey over its deployment of a Russian-made missile defence system acquired last year. The Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) is funded by Stiftung Mercator and the German Federal Foreign Office. That said, Turkey is quickly approaching a critical crossroad on its turbulent political journey: The country will either consolidate its authoritarian regime or return to democracy. That said, all the way until the mid-2000s, the mili­tary limited elected politicians’ authority by intervening in decision-making and staging periodic coups. The next few years will determine the outcome of the drawn-out struggle for the soul of Turkey. Putin sought to bolster his ratings through assertive foreign policy, opposition to the West, and the appeal to nationalism. That does not imply that, in contrast to Turkey, the Russian polity is destined to remain authori­tarian. Nato. That is certainly not how Russia reads the situation, to be sure. NAT 9th January 2021. Turkey and Russia belong, of course, to different religious realms: the one is overwhelmingly Muslim, the other largely Orthodox. Expectations that he might, second, that the Motherland, whether Russia, and Libya. Since the end of the Cold War, however, the two countries have established an important economic relationship, and they have set a bold, perhaps unreachable target of $100 billion in bilateral trade. Putin sought to bolster his ratings, have eroded the regime’s legitimacy. Such was the case with the sale of the S-400 to Turkey. Foreign policy of a country / a region, The Turkish electorate is conscious of its power to change governments through elec­tions and is unwilling to relinquish that privi­­lege. Turkey and Russia have already agreed to set up a joint centre in the region to monitor the Nov. 10 ceasefire, which ended weeks of fighting between Azerbaijan’s troops and … According to the preliminary data, the next few days suggest exciting developments in Russian-Turkish relations, which seem to have entered a new path after the air operation that targeted a training center for the militants of the Levant Legion (Faylaq Sham) loyal to Erdogan near the borders with Turkey, which adopts this faction and all the factions in the region. (1) According to Russian Federal Customs Service data. When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Turkey condemned this mildly as the geopolitical landscape had changed in the previous decade and its rivalry with Russia over energy resources had come to an end. Igor Delanoë is deputy director of the Franco-Russian Observatory in Moscow. Russian polity is destined to remain authori, by concrete measures to support pro-democ, https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/about-swp/ quality-management-for-swp-publications/, State and society of a country / a region, Download NAT 9th January 2021. There are, however, two other powers that have benefited from the conflict and the resolution effort: Turkey and Russia. COVID-19 has put on display its inefficiency and vulnerability. Turkey worked with Russia to partition parts of northern Syria, removing US forces and spreading extremism. What also matters is the electoral culture. With a twist of irony, it is now Russia that may break this alliance. Turkey–Russia relations are currently fragile and transactional. But what it does suggest is that the similarities Russia and Turkey exhibit are emblematic of all authoritarian or hybrid regimes, rather than a result of Erdoğan borrowing from Putin. 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