Putin’s Turkish Nightmare

The revived geopolitical rivalry between Russia and Turkey spells trouble for Putin and his allies.

 
On the first of October 1939, just three days after the fall of Warsaw and Poland’s destruction at the hands of Soviet and German forces, Stalin summoned Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Mehmet Şükrü Saracoğlu, to a meeting in the Kremlin. For a brief period after the First World War the two states shared feelings of antipathy for the West. Stalin’s meeting with the Turkish minister changed this condition.

Was the British-French-Turkish Pact, Stalin asked, directed against the Soviet Union? Without waiting for an answer, Stalin reminded the Turkish foreign minister that Britain and France had not declared war on the Soviet Union even though he and the Germans had carved up Poland together. However, the British and French, Stalin warned, might still do so. In that case, roared Stalin, where would Turkey stand? Stalin, always the consummate bully, also noted ominously that, like Poland, Romania had too much territory.

Saracoğlu quickly reassured Stalin that Turkey could void the agreement with Britain and France in order to avoid war with Moscow. However, a week later, when the British military attaché inquired what Ankara would do if the British bombed the Baku oil fields, the British attaché reported that Turkey was begging for the chance to “settle scores with Stalin.”

Turkey’s scores with Russia were never settled. However, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s initial rapport with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was welcomed by many in Moscow as breaking the historic pattern of Turkish enmity toward Russia.

Predictably, Putin was listening when Erdogan told his NATO allies in Brussels that “Turkey is too big and too influential to surrender to a single axis.” Putin downplayed the Turkish shoot-down in Syria of a Russian aircraft and worked hard to sell Russia’s S-400 air defense system to Turkey. When Putin learned from his intelligence services of the plan to overthrow President Erdogan, Putin informed Erdogan.

 
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Πηγή: theamericanconservative.com