Putin and Hollande fight for Turkey in absentia
France officially announced the winner of the presidential race - Francois Hollande. About 52% of the French who came to the polls voted for the leader of the socialists. Nicolas Sarkozy should in the near future leave the presidential palace and stay in stories France was its 23 president, many of whose political decisions were very ambiguously perceived both within the Fifth Republic and beyond. One of the most resonant laws relating to the country's foreign policy, which were adopted under President Sarkozy, was a law banning the denial of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the last century. After the adoption of this law, any Frenchman who allows himself to speak in a frivolous manner about the genocide of the Armenian people or to cast doubt on the fact of genocide was waited and is awaiting the most real criminal prosecution. With such a law, Nicolas Sarkozy clearly wanted to win over the Armenian diaspora of France during the presidential race, however, as we now understand, Sarkozy clearly did not have enough Armenian voices for his own victory.
It was because of the adoption of this law that relations between Paris and Ankara radically changed. These relations can be called stalled, since neither one nor the other state did not want to make concessions to each other in this difficult matter. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan directly accused Sarkozy that he purposefully opens an anti-Turkish page in the history of France. The situation was aggravated by the fact that both France and Turkey are members of the North Atlantic Alliance, and the reluctance of their authorities to meet each other temporarily put a big cross on joint military exercises and operations.
However, now the Turkish authorities look at France in a slightly different way. It is obvious that Ankara expects some concessions from the new French president in the sensitive Armenian issue, which, like a shadow, lay on the relations between the two states. But the fact is that for now Hollande himself cannot decide on his position in relation to Turkey. Just a couple of weeks before the voting in the presidential election, Francois Hollande announced that he was calling on Turkey to recognize the Armenian Genocide of the 1915 of the year in order to open the road to the European Union itself. Apparently, the future president also did not want to lose his supporters from the numerous Armenian diaspora of the Fifth Republic. After the announcement of the official results of the presidential elections, the socialist Hollande decided to soften his rhetoric in relation to official Ankara, which, obviously, from Ankara itself could not go unnoticed.
24-th French president said he was ready to improve relations with Turkey, which were brought to a standstill by the previous leadership of France. Hollande said that he is ready to make a proposal to change the interpretation of the law on the Armenian Genocide, in order to “fit” it under the French constitution. The new president stressed that he wants to show that the law is clearly not aimed at discrediting modern Turkey and wants to convey this fact to both the Turkish authorities and ordinary citizens of Turkey.
After these words, Hollande decided to speak out and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said that he had high hopes for the new president of France. The Turkish Prime Minister believes that all previous “populist statements” of another candidate Hollande on the Armenian genocide will be a thing of the past. In this regard, it can be stated that the French President 24 had already faced a very serious foreign policy problem before he officially assumed office. If now he really decides to radically revise the law on genocide adopted by the French Senate under Sarkozy, then this will incur Hollens disfavor of those who advocated this law. If Francois Hollande leaves everything as it is now, then it is a big risk to lose Turkey as an ally, if not forever, then for many years to come.
However, the Armenian Genocide of 1915 of the year is far from the only issue that looks unnecessarily acute in the relations of Paris and Ankara. In recent years, Turkey has been actively seeking to get into the European Union, however, it is France that acts as an active opponent of such integration. Every time the Turkish authorities from Paris tried to remind that for the time being, there can be no question of joining for several reasons. First, the European Union calls on Turkey to abandon its claims to Northern Cyprus, which has been under Ankara’s self-proclaimed jurisdiction since the 70-s of the last century. Secondly, Turkey is blamed for the fact that its authorities have not yet implemented enough internal reforms to comply with the democratic norms of the European Union. Another important controversial issue preventing Turkey from becoming a member of the EU is, as European officials say, uncontrolled migration from Turkey to the countries of united Europe. It was the migration problem that became one of the last drops that broke the cup of Turkish patience. The fact is that barriers were built on the Greek border, which, according to the authors' idea, were to isolate the European Union from Turkish migrants. Such discrimination even forced Turkish government officials to say that they would now think themselves now a hundredfold, whether to continue contacts with the European Union or pay attention to integration with other partners.
By the way, it was after the incident around that very Greek wall that reports began to appear about the interest in cooperation between Ankara and the Eurasian Union, the idea of which was then made by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Such interest of the Turkish authorities is supported by the fact that after the fall in commodity turnover between Turkey and Russia during the height of the economic crisis, today these figures are rapidly growing again. At the beginning of 2012, the turnover was over 20 billion dollars. It would seem that by modern standards, this is a fairly modest figure, but, for example, the Turkish-American trade turnover is only 12 billion dollars.
In addition, Russian specialists are building Akkuyu NPP in Turkey, and about 1,5 years ago, it was the European Union that opposed cooperation between Russia and Turkey in the field of nuclear energy. This once again shows that Europeans are simply trying to keep Turkey on a leash, saying that we will oppose its accession to the EU, hinting at "democratic flaws", but we will not allow developing relations with other countries. A strategy that speaks eloquently about using Turkey only as a kind of buffer between the European Union and the Middle East, which (buffer) will act as a guarantor of stability in the south-eastern approaches to the EU. Having a loyal and powerful neighbor is beneficial for the EU, but after all, this neighbor can at one “wonderful” moment change the vector of its foreign policy guidelines.
In this regard, it is worth noting that, perhaps in the near future, we will witness a kind of correspondence duel between Russia and the European Union for the loyalty of Turkey. And since, on the one hand, there is Francois Hollande, who has shown willingness to offer Ankara a compromise solution, and on the other, Vladimir Putin, who, as we know, is also able to convince, the correspondence duel Putin-Hollande emerges. The result of this bloodless duel can play great importance both for Turkey itself and for Russia with the European Union. And it must be admitted that lately the Europeans have begun to harsherly react to Ankara’s desire to fall under the EU’s wing. And this gives Russia greater chances to take the bull by the horns and show Turkey that for Ankara, partnership with Moscow has much more advantages than orientation to the changeable Brussels. Of course, one cannot say that relations between Turkey and Russia are absolutely cloudless, there are also their own “fly in the ointment”. One of these "fly in the ointment" is the almost polar position on the Syrian situation. Turkey is in favor of the assassination of Assad, and Russia does not see the expediency in this. However, views on foreign policy clearly should not hinder a reliable economic partnership between Moscow and Ankara. In the end, it is the economy that can become a locomotive that will bring the relations of the two countries to a qualitatively new level.
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