The military-political confrontation between Turkey and Russia in Libya and Syria should be seen in a unified context. However, it should not be forgotten that the United States remains a moderator of these and other events in the region, playing its own game with each side. Recently, after a phone call between Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the latter intrigued journalists and observers with his statement: «A new era can begin between Turkey and the U.S. after our phone call. We agreed on some issues.» Of course, those who have been following Turkish-American relations for a long time have become accustomed to the fact that such loud statements of friendship, cooperation and new eras are often followed by equally loud threats and accusations, and vice versa. It is quite possible that what we are witnessing today is not so much a «new era» as a new, additional turn that will later be replaced by an opposite turn.
However, in the great global game, new opportunities are indeed opening up for U.S.-Turkish relations. At the moment, the Trump administration is launching two sanctions packages that are directly or indirectly related to Turkey’s interests: the Uyghur Act and the Syrian or so-called Caesar Act. The latter is obviously aimed at Erdogan’s enemy, the Bashar al-Assad regime, and indirectly at Russia as its patron and Turkey’s competitor in Syria. As for the Uyghur Act, for the United States it is clear — it is directed against its number one enemy. But it is not so obvious for Turkey.
Analyzing the twists and turns of Turkish foreign policy during Erdogan’s rule, analysts of «Golos Islama» have repeatedly written about the fact that different periods were characterized by different preferences of allies and competitors. The period of Ahmet Davutoglu’s prime ministership was characterized by competition with neo-Fatimid Iran and neo-Byzantine Russia, as well as an attempt to strengthen the strategic partnership with the West as a guarantor of order and sustainable development in the Middle East, as well as a model for the latter to follow.
The period before the 2016 coup, and especially after it, was characterized by a sharp turn to the «East,» but not the «green» one, but the «red» one. In Syria, this manifested itself in an attempt to reach a compromise with Iran and Russia, for which they made many concessions. However, if we consider the global scale, it is obvious that these two countries can only be regional satellites of the global player — China. By the way, in order to deflect the anger of conspiracy theorists who believe that neither Russia nor Iran can really be anti-Western players, we would like to address them with the same conspiratorial argument — there is a point of view according to which all these countries, including China, are being bet on by the global conspiratorial elite, traditionally clustered around London, which intends to eliminate the US as the leading global power and bet primarily on China as its new base. Whether this is true or not, we do not know, but what is obvious is China’s ambition to become, if not the first, then the second global power by building a new global geopolitical and geo-economic architecture, starting with the SCO and ending with the One Belt, One Road project.
In the pre- and post-coup periods of its foreign policy, Ankara has taken many steps towards Iran, Russia and China. This includes the Uyghur issue, with the suppression of Uyghur dissidents on Turkish territory, as well as the activities of Islamic immigrants from Putin’s Russia, which have been muted in favor of Moscow. However, the clashes with Russia in Syria last year and in Libya this year have shown the limits of their cooperation and the existence of serious contradictions that cannot be resolved without one side giving up its ambitions. At the same time, Moscow has no contradictions with Beijing — Putin’s Russia fully aligns itself with China and demonstrates its readiness to support it in the Cold War against the United States. On the other hand, Ankara has not only immediate contradictions with Moscow, but also equally serious potential contradictions with Beijing — the Uighur issue and the broader Turkistan-Islamic issue. No matter how much Erdogan tries to suppress these contradictions now, it is obvious that Turkey’s ambitious foreign policy under the leadership of the Islamo-Turkish coalition (AKP-MHP) on the one hand makes Turkey a center of attraction for the Turkic-Muslim world, but on the other hand obliges it to patronize this world.
If Beijing were more flexible and continued the policy that was formulated under Deng Xiaoping to ensure China’s success, Beijing and Ankara could easily find a strategic compromise to the benefit of both sides. However, as noted above, China is now ruled by a cohort of party members led by Xi Jinping who are moving China away from Deng Xiaoping’s relative liberalism and toward neo-Maoism. The first victims of this policy have been the Turks and Muslims, especially the Uighurs. And not only in China — China’s policy toward independent Turkic states in Central Asia is also characterized by obvious neo-colonialism, which is inflexible and openly rude.
On the other hand, the United States has an objective interest in regaining Ankara’s alliance in the face of an intensifying confrontation with China. Trump’s readiness to fully support Haftar in Libya and his imposition of new sanctions against the Assad regime objectively play into Turkey’s hands and can be seen as a payment for the return of such an alliance.
But Ankara also has serious contradictions with Washington. The Sisi regime in Egypt, the KSA-UAE alliance led by Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed, and finally the Netanyahu regime and its policies are all strategic allies and satellites of the United States as well as adversaries of the current Turkish government. Moreover, Turkey’s recent policy in the Eastern Mediterranean has consolidated a broad regional bloc of northern and southern Mediterranean countries against it, expecting support from the United States.
Will the White House be willing to sacrifice all these countries, at least in the form of a substantial strategic compromise on their part, in order to regain Turkey as a strategic ally? And, equally important, will it be able to do so? The answers to these complex questions will determine whether Ankara and Washington can truly expect a new era of strategic cooperation or just another tactical turn.