Turkey: Syria Crisis Causes Russian Relations to Suffer

Although Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan brought his energy minister along on a one-day visit July 18 to Moscow, it’s safe to assume that rather than oil and gas prices, the question of how to resolve the crisis in Syria dominated the discussion between Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

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“I think that the Syria crisis – in conjunction with other issues such as Cyprus, NATO missile defense and pipeline politics, all of which put Turkey against Russia – is going to erode substantially the amity between the two countries,” added Blank. [Editor’s Note: Blank contributes occasional commentaries to EurasiaNet].

Just a few months ago, many Turks had good reason to believe their country and Russia were heading toward a golden age in their relations, which had for decades been dominated by the divisions of the Cold War. As one overly optimistic Turkish paper described it only this past January, Turkey was “now a strategic partner of Moscow.”

Business between the two counties has boomed in the last decade, with Russia now representing Turkey’s largest trade partner. Between 2001 and 2011, Turkish exports to Russia grew 548 percent, from $0.9 billion to $5.9 billion, while Russian exports to Turkey – mostly gas and oil – increased almost 600 percent, rising from $3.4 billion to $23.9 billion.
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“There was always the hope in Moscow that they could somehow woo Turkey and exploit the rift between Turkey and the United States and the EU. I think Moscow was pretty shocked when Turkey came on board in Libya,” says Fiona Hill, an expert on Russia at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

Indeed, since the NATO-led operation in Libya last year, Turkey’s ties with the Atlantic Alliance – as well as with Washington – have deepened. Ankara’s role in NATO has become more prominent, particularly with regards to the deteriorating situation in Syria. Like it or not, Ankara may find that it and Moscow are again standing on opposite sides of what should be familiar ideological and geopolitical fault-lines.