Is there an axis in a leader who makes free fall a style of politics? Can a unity of meaning be sought in this policy? Not of course!
In a course laden with inconsistencies, inevitable drifts occur. And he has to hold onto something to handle the situation. The state of the one who fell into the sea; Looking for a branch to hug, a snake to cling to. While the swaying state is continuous, loyalty to the place it clings to is not required. Here is the family of President Tayyip Erdogan. Who else would it be!
Erdogan, who hurt the Russians with the Bayraktar TB2s he gave to Ukraine, and angered the Kremlin by being the spokesman for Kiev in Crimea, is now lashing out at the West. From the spokesperson of Kiev to the spokesperson of Moscow. It is unmatched. We don’t know if he’ll make Putin raise a toast to “Erdogan’s honor”. But the Russian leader is clearly investing in Erdogan, pulling him into his own game.
“I had a meeting, and if Putin’s approach is positive, it will be ‘light and light’,” Erdogan says about natural gas prices, which burns pockets and makes people think more and more. A beauty awaits from Putin. He agrees with Putin that Europe will spend the winter trembling. He accuses the West of pursuing a policy on provocation. He emphasizes that they will not get results from this. What they say is true, but it is a problem if it is Erdogan who said it. He argues that the West sends whatever scrap weapons it has to Ukraine. He sends Bayraktar TB2 from the groom’s factory! But what’s more provocative than sending a UAV? Wasn’t he the head coach of the politics he said “You can’t get results”? When the Russian invasion started on February 24, didn’t he say that he expected a decisive step, not a reaction from NATO, and said, “It should not turn into an ordinary revel of condemnation, Hacivat Karagöz”?
Looks like he’s seen the light now. “Russia is not a country to be taken lightly,” he says. He didn’t add because it’s fixed with experience. “What happened?” he asks. He agrees with Putin by saying, “Russia has cut off the natural gas right now, prices suddenly went up in Europe. Now everyone is brooding over them. You didn’t think about them beforehand. When everyone attacks him, Russia will use its means and weapons.”
REASONS FOR PUTIN TO INVEST IN ERDOĞAN
When Erdogan’s line becomes like this, Putin also keeps Turkey separate. The reasons are obvious:
– He sees Erdogan playing a double game between the West and Russia. In fact, this gives Putin open positions where he can lure Erdogan into his game.
– It is also valuable that Turkey does not accompany the sanctions. Except for the SİHAs it sells, Turkey did not send weapons to Ukraine like other Western countries.
– Moreover, Turkey is becoming a conduit for the commercial-financial operations of sanctioned Russian companies.
– The fact that Turkey’s Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership process continues to an upsurge is also important, although there is a temporary resistance. So Putin has good reasons to invest in Erdogan.
While Erdogan is desperately in need of financial resources, Putin parks the 10 billion dollars he had set aside for the Akkuyu nuclear power plant at the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. If he makes a price reduction in natural gas, “the light will be taken”. (Light upon light!) Let it rain Putin!
At the last meeting in Sochi, it was decided to partially pay the price of natural gas in rubles. According to Gazprom, this rate may be 25 percent.
This is not a situation that equates to the bilateral trade in national currencies that Erdogan desires. In addition to the price reduction, Erdogan expects conveniences such as making payments with Treasury papers or postponing debts. If Putin is going to do this favor, there will be political consequences. Contemporary capitulations impose itself while Erdogan is in such bad shape that he can consider the jingle of the Treasury’s safe with borrowed money from friendly countries a success. Friendship does not break there.
NEW YORK MEETINGS WITH SAMERKAND: GET READY FOR THE Tides
Clearly, Erdogan seems to have lost his shrewdness in his policy of deceiving or balancing the West with Russia and Russia with the West. More lean towards Putin since the August 5th Sochi meeting. Erdogan’s threatening policy towards Greece also benefits Putin. If Greece poured bitterness on its long-standing friendship with the Russians and offered military partnership in the US’s strategy to contain Russia, what could be better than Erdogan’s falconry against Athens… For Russia, too!
Erdogan is acting on the assumption that Putin will come out stronger and that Europe’s nose will be rubbed. The sudden withdrawal of the Russians from places such as Balakleya and Izyum on the Kharkiv front may cause a momentary pause in the predictions of the course of the war. Of course, Russia is not going to give up. In Putin’s world, a step back means the beginning of the disintegration of the Russian Federation.
Besides, Erdogan’s tides may increase due to the rush to get an appointment with Biden during the UN General Assembly in New York in the coming days. He emphasized the value of partnership with the USA on his way to New York last year, but could not meet with Biden. On the way back, he said, “I worked well with Bush, I worked well with Obama, I worked well with Trump, but I cannot say that we started well with Biden.” he was in a complaint. Moreover, as his next appointment was with Putin, he was sending greetings there: “We have not seen any wrongdoing in relations with Russia so far.”
Biden may meet Erdogan this time because of Turkish-Greek tensions. This, in turn, may cause a pause in Erdogan’s line of favoring Putin and a return to the old consistency in his double game. This may not take long. After all, winter is coming for everyone. If Putin does not do good in energy, it will be Erdogan’s turn to tremble towards the election.
He has a meeting with Putin in Samarkand on September 15-16 before his New York expedition. A new turn in Erdogan’s direction crisis. They want to mature the ground for membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Slowly, test it. Of course, there will be no results that require excitement from the summit, but it will be a meeting that will increase Erdogan’s interaction with worlds outside the Western hegemony.
THE DIFFERENCE OF THE INSTABILITY IN POLITICS, PERSONALITY AND MONEY
Erdogan’s spectacular instability over who to be friend and foe with whom is also a problem in terms of eastward orientation. Instability is a terrible thing. In diplomacy, economy, defense partnership…
For example, it is very necessary to trade in national currencies, but TL is as unstable as Erdogan. How can Russia rely? Or China!
Russia is shifting from “toxic currencies” to “less political” currencies in bilateral trade in the face of sanctions. Gazprom is shaking hands with the Chinese to make half of its gas payments in rubles and half in yuan. With India, the ruble and rupee mechanism comes into play. When it comes to Turkey, 25 percent of the payment is expected to be in rubles. In other words, TL is treated as a “bad currency”. Erdogan is responsible, not Putin.
The deadlocks caused by inconsistency are everywhere. After being kicked out of the F-35 partnership because of the S-400 in defense, Erdoğan, who could not overcome the congressional obstacle regarding the F-16 package, said, “The place that sells fighter jets is not just America. England sells, France sells, Russia sells. There are those who flash signals to us from everywhere.”
While it was the canon season in diplomacy, the Ukraine war opened up room for Erdogan to maneuver. Russia took the credit for the cross grain agreements between Ukraine, Turkey and the UN. It looks like the bottom of the source. Because the deal gives SOS. Russia cannot deliver its grain and fertilizer products to international markets due to the problems arising from the sanctions in logistics, insurance and money transfer to ships. The agreement with the UN was to untie this knot. If the situation does not change, Russia may not extend the agreement allowing the exit of Ukrainian grain in November. Putin raises this issue with the argument that only two of the 87 ships that left Ukraine went to poor countries. Erdogan also gives the Russian leader the right. Erdogan’s approach is “Putin sends the grain, we deliver it to African countries”. It is rather strange that he thinks that Russian grain was not sent, not because of the embargoes, but as if the poor countries were not benefiting. Anyway, this issue will be discussed in Uzbekistan.
Erdogan seems to be under Putin’s patronage. The pain is that a whole country takes a direction like a leaf according to the flow of the wind. If this is called direction!