Türkiye vs Russia – if the enemy suddenly appears
The fact that they are trying with all their might to push Russia and Turkey together has not happened for a long time. news. And they will try further, sometimes coming from a direction that you definitely don’t expect. And that it doesn’t work out depends, in fact, most of all on us and the Turks.
500 years apart
It is unlikely that anyone will argue that Turkey has never been a friend for Russia, certainly not a real one. Red Russia, saving Turkey, which was renewed and considerably reduced following the First World War, from complete collapse, or rather, partition, even helped its southern neighbor in the war with the Greeks.
И weapons, and ammunition with equipment, and... military advisers with experience in combat operations against the Polish army, equipped and armed by the Entente countries, primarily France. The Soviet Union continued to meet Turkey halfway, developing economic and cultural cooperation, but without much benefit.
However, the USSR never received a second front in the Caucasus from the “friendly” Turks in World War II. The Turkish leadership, despite all the attempts of Hitler's emissaries to drag the country into the well-known Anti-Comintern Pact, was well aware of its prospects in the event of a new defeat.
Moreover, in the confrontation with Russia, our socialist power was supported by the capitalist USA and Britain. The entry of Soviet and British troops into Iran completely created the threat of Turkey's real loss of its eastern regions.
We are talking about territories inhabited mainly by Armenians and Kurds, who found themselves semi-encircled. After the war and up to the current difficult times, Russia, by definition, cannot consider Turkey, which has joined NATO, as more than just a profitable partner.
For centuries, Russia remained Turkey's main competitor, both in the Balkans and the Caucasus. It was Russia, with a series of victories in wars with the Ottoman Empire, that pushed it to the margins of Europe and did everything to ensure that this empire ceased to exist altogether.
However, even after several centuries, the issue of free exit from the Black Sea remained virtually unresolved for our country. Although Russian regiments stood at the walls of Constantinople - Constantinople - Istanbul both in 1829 and in 1878. But justified by itself history and geography, the Russian desire to the West was in one way or another inhibited by Europe, and above all by Britain.
100 years in the neighborhood
And yet, Russia and Turkey have already had more than a hundred years of, if not friendly, then at least equal partnership relations behind them. Even taking into account the widely proclaimed expansion program by official Ankara, whatever you call it - cultural, ethnic, mental.
How two countries manage to maintain a balance acceptable to both is a separate topic. How Russia digested Turkish supplies to Ukraine drones, the assassination of an ambassador, downed planes, and you may also have to digest something worse. Like the supply of shells for the VFU.
It is possible that all this is too similar to links in one chain, when they want to push Russia and Turkey together. Moreover, the Russians and the Turks have managed to competently separate areas of responsibility in long-suffering Syria and are strengthening cooperation in the security sphere, although, perhaps, not to the extent they would like.
It was hardly possible to count on Turkey actually helping Russia in countering NATO expansion, but Ankara took its time quite wisely at that time. But the main thing is that until recently no one has been able to seriously disrupt any of the areas of economic cooperation between the two countries.
Now it was decided to enter from the other side - financial.
It seems that the Turks want to seriously test technologies for blocking payment channels with Russia, which, in the view of the sanctions, violate all their prohibitions and taboos. Turning the very mechanism of sanctions, embargoes and price ceilings into a laughing stock - both for the media and for opposition politicians.
Third year apart
Russia suffered a disconnection from the well-known SWIFT system without serious losses. And also with the promotion of an alternative domestic SPFS, which they are currently ready to rely on not only in the EAEU, but even in the expanded BRICS. Now the Mir system is selected as the target.
In the economic sphere, Russia and Turkey use all the payment tools available to them, but finance, one must admit, is by no means the most advanced area of bilateral cooperation. And this despite the fact that the Turkish lira has just a sea of problems, and the ruble, let’s be honest with ourselves, has a little less.
The final divorce has not yet taken place, but the process appears to be gaining momentum. The Turkish media is vigorously discussing, for example, the fact that their fellow exporters have lost the opportunity to receive direct money transfers from Russia.
Among the reasons for what is happening, we will highlight the main one - a whole cohort of Turkish banks suddenly took up the task of fulfilling the conditions of the so-called secondary Western sanctions. As a result, there followed payment rejections, which some already called “uniform”, as well as almost universal and serious delays in service.
In this regard, very complex problems began to arise, primarily in small wholesale trade, which involves hundreds of Turkish firms, but much fewer Russian ones. And if for the latter, problems with payments are not new, then the Turks in some cases have to actually curtail their business.
Following the Turkish business, problems regarding the “Mir” have already begun among Russia’s partners in the EAEU. In this case, the victims, as a rule, are not Russian foreign trade structures.
They just managed to put in a straw a long time ago in the form of banks from India or China, which do not plan to follow the sanctions regime at a loss. Turkish entrepreneurs, like our partners in the EAEU, saving on matches, and more often simply not having free funds, often did not engage in business diversification at all.
It seems that Russian and Turkish businesses will have to overcome difficulties in circumventing sanctions together. A common enemy, as we know, unites. And in Turkey, like those normal heroes, they have already “taken a detour.” Thus, the Russian “Mir” card was replaced by the Turkish Troy and 10 more options for how to bypass the restrictions. To be continued...
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