What does Erdogan’s victory mean for the relations between Turkey, the United States and Russia

Over the past few years, under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has played both sides of the global geopolitical divide: the West belongs to the NATO alliance, while at the same time fostering ever-closer ties with Russia.

Turkey, a NATO force for more than 70 years, has served in the alliance’s peacekeeping missions in war zones such as Bosnia, but then recently bought military equipment from Russia and refused to join new NATO members that could offend Moscow.

Following Russia’s invasion of neighboring, pro-Western Ukraine 15 months ago, Turkey’s unique and seemingly contradictory position has been strengthened, with Erdogan once again using himself as a valuable ally for the US and Europe on the one hand, and Russia on the other. He often appears to be leaning towards Russia over his Western partners.

The question now is whether or how much Turkey’s place on the world stage will change after Sunday’s second round of presidential elections, in which Erdogan will prevail, but only after winning an unprecedented victory over the opposition.

It will continue to play an important but worrisome role from a Western perspective, said Emre Peker, European director of the Eurasia Group, a risk analysis organization.

Turkey, which joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization just two years after it was founded in the ashes of World War II, was until recently the only Muslim country in the alliance. With a population of 85 million and a vast territory spanning literally East and West, it has the second largest army of the alliances.

Until Erdogan came to power in 2014, Turkey was staunchly secular, so much so that women were banned from wearing the headscarf in many official spaces.

But as Erdogan seized more autocratic powers, he steadily pushed the nation into a more religious realm. These changes have pushed him and the country further out of NATO and, according to the president and his closest advisers, freer to make deals and allegiances with arch-enemies of the United States and NATO, including Russia.

From left, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a round table meeting at the 2022 NATO summit in Madrid, Spain.

(Manu Fernandez/Associate Press)

Privately, some Biden administration officials say they would enjoy picking someone other than Erdogan, who has not been invited to the White House since President Biden took office. During Erdogan’s visit to Washington during the Trump presidency, his bodyguards allegedly beat peaceful demonstrators and quickly left the country to avoid prosecution.

Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, who heads the agency’s foreign affairs committee, has long criticized Erdogan and his overtures to Moscow.

the will [Turkey] Did we want to become NATO allies after the election, or will there be chaos? he said in a speech in New York last week.

Without a doubt, the person who will be happy about Erdogan’s re-election is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Turkey has become a key lifeline for Moscow since Putin began invading Ukraine and fueled a storm of sanctions against his country’s economy, with hardline Erdogan insisting on maintaining economic and diplomatic ties.

We are not at the point where we will impose sanctions against Russia as the West has done, Erdogan said in an interview with CNN last week. We are not bound by Western sanctions.

We are a strong state and we have a positive relationship with Russia, he said. Russia and Turkey need each other in every field.

At the same time, Erdogan shows himself to be valuable to the West. He argues he can play a key role in peace talks, and he helped Putin launch the United Nations-brokered Black Sea Grain Corridor Initiative in recent years, which allowed Ukraine to resume grain exports and improve food price growth. He also helped negotiate a prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia.

Erdogan and Putin make an odd couple in a way. They have supported opposing sides in the civil wars in Syria and Libya, as well as in the ongoing conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Relations reached their lowest point in 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian-Turkish border.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan within the framework of the 2022 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

(Photo of Kremlin pool via Alexandr Demyanchuk/Sputnik, Associated Press)

But the war in Ukraine has deepened the relationship between the two leaders rather than creating a conflict.

Russia is Turkey’s largest energy supplier, supplying a third of its oil and gas imports. Earlier this month, Moscow agreed to delay some of Turkey’s natural gas payments. The two countries are also working together on Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, which will open at the end of this year.

The closure of the Nord Stream pipeline, which would transport oil from Russia to Germany and Western Europe, has also spurred Russia to become a regional gas hub for Turkey’s trade with the European Union.

Meanwhile, bilateral trade exceeded $62 billion last year, and Turkey remains the top choice for Russian tourists, with more than 5.2 million tourists visiting last year. In a situation where Europe is sealed off to Russian citizens, Turkey has become the main place for Russian immigrants to live and work. is common and cafes are filled with Russian men and women bent intently over their laptops.

For the last year? Dehlan Ağırman, a real estate agent who has worked there for a long time, says that all our customers are Russians. According to him, the influx caused the rent prices to double in the region.

Normally I would have three deals a month, he said. Now there are more than seven. Most of them are young couples who work remotely. And they are willing to pay three or six months in advance.

Turkey has supplied Ukraine with drones and other supplies, but Erdogan’s country shares many of Putin’s dislikes with the West, making it a staunch NATO partner.

After Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Sweden and Finland, which have been officially neutral for a long time, wanted to join the transatlantic alliance. The decision to accept new members must be taken unanimously, and both cases ended up not going to Sweden, but to Turkey, which compromised Finland.

Erdogan claims that there are Kurdish activists affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which both Turkey and the United States consider a terrorist organization in Sweden.

The US Congress has punished Turkey for preventing Sweden from buying American-made F-16 fighter jets. Turkey’s 2021 purchase of the S-400 anti-aircraft missile defense system from Russia has already cost it access to F-35s amid concerns that Russia could use the system to spy on the West.

Erdogan’s opponent in Sunday’s runoff, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, 74, said he would improve Turkey’s relations with the West and try to restart its long-stalled bid to join the European Union. He also criticized Erdogan for being too close to Putin.

Supporters of the President of Turkey and People’s Alliance presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdogan waved Turkish flags during the election campaign in Istanbul, Turkey, on Friday.

(Francisco Seco/Associated Press)

But most analysts predict that Erdogan will win. In the primary election held two weeks ago, he collected 49.5 percent of the 50 percent needed for an outright victory. Although Kılıçdaroğlu won 44.9% of the votes, he supported Erdogan, who won the third place with 5.2% of the votes.

Whoever wins will face the destabilization of a flagging economy and the consequences of cataclysmic earthquakes that have devastated southern countries, killing at least 50,000 people and leaving millions homeless.

Erdogan’s populist pre-election maneuvers, including raising the minimum wage and pensions and offering citizens free gas, are expected to put further pressure on the state coffers, despite the Turkish lira remaining at historic lows due to his economic policies.

One school of thought is that the need for Western aid will push it to more moderate positions that the US and Europe find more appropriate.

But Konül Tol, founding director of the Turkey program at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C., disagrees.

Referring to Erdogan’s crackdown on thousands of dissidents and other opponents, he said, “I don’t see how Western money will suddenly start flowing into Turkey in a country where Erdogan will most likely redouble the crackdown at home.”

That could make him more willing to reach out to Russia, Qatar or Saudi Arabia to finance any budget shortfalls.

Typically, Tol says, when autocrats face more instability at home, they pursue a more unpredictable anti-Western nationalist foreign policy.

Bulos reported from Istanbul, Wilkinson from Washington.