Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has arrived in Russia on a visit aimed to rebuild ties. Erdogan is seeking to overcome a long history of dispute with Moscow and forge new alliances after the July 15 coup attempt.
Shortly after touching down in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, Turkish President Erdogan said his country was entering a “very different period” in relations with Russia, and that solidarity between the two nations would help resolve regional problems.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was “glad” to be seeing Erdogan again.
“A new page will be opened in Russo-Turkish ties. This new page will include military, economic and cultural cooperation,” Erdogan told TASS ahead of the trip.
Russia has accepted Ankara’s expressions of regret over the downing of the warplane in the apparent hope of reconciliation while also reviving the relationship. Turkish officials have even detained the pilots of the Turkish planes that shot down the Russian jet on November 24, 2015, accusing them of being involved in the failed coup attempt.
In the long shadow of Turkey’s failed coup d’etat
The visit is Erdogan’s first foreign trip after the July 15 coup attempt, when a group of renegade Turkish military officers attempted to seize power leaving at least 230 people dead. Turkey has since blasted its Western allies for expressing concern over the scope of its ensuing crackdown on dissidents, complaining that the West has shown a lack of support for its democratically elected government. In contrast, Russia was quick to voice support to Erdogan after the failed coup without mentioning any concern about the crackdown.
A long history of disagreement
Russia reacted to the downing of its jet fighter with a ban on the sale of package tours to Turkey and an import embargo on Turkish agriculture, which Turkey countered by shelving a major Russian natural gas pipeline to Turkey. The bitter dispute even led Putin to declare that Erdogan had left modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk “turning in his grave.”
But relations between Turkey and Russia – two powers vying for influence in the region – have never been straightforward. Ties between the two nations can at best be described as a marriage of convenience.
Turkey’s predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, and Russia’s precursor, the Russian Empire, have fought three centuries of war, culminating in an armistice with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk at the end of World War I. Though the two powers didn’t exchange animosities during the Cold War they found themselves on opposing sides, with Turkey entering NATO and the Soviet Union forming the Warsaw Pact.