Dating back to before the Crimean War, the Russian military has always had a place in the psyche of Turks. In “Istanbul: Memories and the City,” Orhan Pamuk recalls Soviet destroyers stealthily moving north through the Bosphorus in the dead of night during the peak of the cold war, invisible except for their eerie black silhouettes.
So Turkey scrambling jets following an incursion of a Russian aircraft into Turkish airspace over the Black Sea is one of those reminders that the long dormant little volcano of history between the two still shows signs of life now and then. (A nice summary of the history of Turkish-Russian/Ukranian relations can be found here.)
But it’s the liras and the “hryvnia” that do the talking now. Posturing aside, Turkey does a brisk trade with Ukraine, around $6.2 billion in 2012. Everything from Natashas in Trabzon, to the majority ownership Turkcell has in life:), the third largest mobile operator in Ukraine, reminds us that there a number of economic links between the two, born out of geography and transcending socio-economic strata. It shows the inexorable link between the Black Sea neighbors. In fact, Turkey is Ukraine’s largest trading partner, after Russia.
However, trade between Russia and Turkey is significant as well, to the tune of $33 billion, with the two sides eager for more. This could explain why the government has been cautious about reacting to the recent flare ups. Foreign Minister Davutoglu recently made an unscheduled trip to our northern neighbor, but his tone was diplomatic, with no outward bias.
UPDATE: Turkey’s Erdogan tells Putin crisis must be resolved by Ukrainians
Then there are the pan-Turkic heartstrings. complicating all this is the ethnic sympathies with Turkic minorities in the former Soviet Union’s continuing sphere of influence.
There is a sizeable Turkic Tatar minority in the Crimean peninsula, a minority which has taken a pro-Ukrainian stance as of late. A recent protest in Ankara against Russian aggression by the Crimean-Tatar Turkish community is testament to that.
Anyone who remembers the ethnic strife in Uyhgar western China that that took place in 2009 can attest to the protests and the resulting pro-Uyghar declarations of solidarity on social media.
An estimate 300,000 now live in Crimea, the majority of whom relocated after being kicked out of Crimea during Soviet times. There is a very large community of Crimean Tatars who resettled in Eskisehir, a city in western Anatolia.
I suspect Turkey will lay low: maintain its neutrality, a task that will be easy compared to the current shit storm wiretapping scandal engulfing the government before the March 30 elections. More on that to come later.
What do you think?