Turkey and Russia are capitalising on a perilous world in which nations have no fixed allies or enemies

Longstanding alliances have given away to fragmented and provisional partnerships based on raw interests, writes Borzou Daragahi

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian president Vladimir Putin attend the opening ceremony of the Turkstream Gas Pipeline Project in January 2020 (Getty)

It seemed like the end of the road for relations between Nato allies Turkey and the United States. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described ties between Washington and Ankara as the worst ever under his 18 years as Turkey’s leader. “The current trajectory does not bode well,” he said at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York last month, after he failed to secure a meeting with Biden. “The point we have reached in our relations with the United States is not good.”

Within days he was in the Russian resort city of Sochi, meeting for nearly three hours with president Vladimir Putin to talk trade, nuclear energy deals, space exploration and weapons sales, including more Turkish purchases of the Russian-made S-400 defence systems that have rankled Washington and provoked sanctions. The events suggested that Turkey was moving deeper and deeper into Russian orbit.

But not so fast. For, even as Erdogan was cosying up to Putin, Turkey was putting the final touches on a groundbreaking deal with Kiev to build its coveted Bayraktar TB2 attack drone on Ukrainian soil for Ukrainian forces to use against Russian-backed separatist forces. It was a provocation of the Kremlin even the west had not dared, and it came after Ankara agreed to sell 24 of the drones – which have proven devastatingly effective against Russian-backed forces in Syria, Libya and the Caucasus – to Poland, despite the objections of the EU and Nato.

There is a logic to the manoeuvering. “The Russian relationship keeps the US honest,” says Yusuf Erim, a Turkish analyst who was in Sochi during the Putin-Erdogan summit. “The Ukraine relationship keeps Russia honest.”

But there is a broader dynamic at work. Among those who study political science and international relations, all the talk in recent years has been about the emergence of a multipolar world, where the longstanding east-west or north-south alliances have given away to fragmented and provisional partnerships based on raw interests. Perhaps there’s no better illustration of the perilous world in which nations have no fixed allies or enemies than the ties that bind and separate Turkey, Russia and the west.

Certainly, values play a role in the new world disorder. Turkey sees itself as betrayed by the US and western Europe for a number of reasons, including the EU’s refusal to allow Turks to become part of the bloc and Washington’s support for Kurdish rebels and unwillingness to sell Turkey anti-aircraft weapons on favourable terms.

Turkey embraces Russia in part to join an emerging Eurasian power bloc that includes China, while supporting Ukraine as a fellow victim of Russian imperialism over the centuries. The Ottoman Empire’s centuries-long hold over the Caucasus, the Middle East and north Africa may drive Erdogan’s interest in building influence in those regions.

But pursuit of national interests without any adherence to broader values or loyalties is a better explanation of Turkey’s manoeuvres. Ukraine makes stellar jet engines that can give Turkey’s emerging drone industry an edge. Russia is providing Ankara with anti-aircraft weaponry it believes it needs to protect itself on its southern flank.

Few know what transpired at the 29 September meeting between Erdogan and Putin. Erdogan flouted diplomatic protocol by meeting with Putin without any of the decorum that surrounds such summits. There were few if any foreign ministry officials, and little knowledge about what went on during their meeting. It was a largely private tete-a-tete between the two leaders. They reportedly spoke about a number of matters, including Turkey’s slow adoption of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. “We left Sochi after having a productive meeting with my colleague Putin,” Erdogan wrote in a Tweet that featured pictures of the leaders smiling together.

But what is more jarring is that despite the good cheer, Turkey and Russia are in many ways locked in a geopolitical conflict like no two other nations in the world. Putin is creating a nightmare for Turkey in northwest Syria’s Idlib province, pummelling the hilly farmlands and small towns with airstrikes that threaten to spark another exodus of refugees toward Turkish borders. Turkey played a significant role in defeating Russian-armed and trained Armenian forces in their war with Azerbaijan last year. Turkey’s overt military intervention thwarted Moscow’s designs on Libya.

And then there is Ukraine. Erdogan is the only world leader who regularly speaks out against the Russian annexation of Crimea and gives financial and political support to Crimea’s Muslim Tatars. In addition to building the Bayrak drone factory in Ukraine, Turkey has sold two dozen of the drones to Kiev. Deploying the weaponry drones in eastern Ukraine could devastate the militia-like Kremlin-backed forces and the puppet government behind them. “This is a gamechanger,” says Yoruk Isik, an Istanbul-based expert on the Black Sea region. “We are seeing Ukrainian government victories in the east for the first time.”

Turkey is also selling Ukraine two Ada-class corvette warships used to destroy submarines, such as the Kilo-class Russian subs now patrolling the Black Sea, including the breakaway region of Crimea that Putin annexed. “The Ukrainians are getting support from Turkey that they are getting from no one else,” said Isik. “Turkey is the only Nato country that is physically involved in the Crimea crisis.”

In the end, Turkey will make allies with the west or east. Simply put, it pursues its own interests, and in that way it is acting like many other nations that refuse to be pinned down by age-old alliances. They include a Russia that prides itself on what it calls a “multi-vector” foreign policy rooted in situational interests, an enduringly isolationist America as well as post-Brexit Britain, and a France that is seemingly fed up with Nato and eager to find an alternative security structure for Europe. Going it alone is what the multi-polar era is about.