Turkey was shaken last Friday as a faction of the military tried
unsuccessfully to force President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from
power. The coup attempt failed within a day, and Erdogan was quick to
use the opportunity to solidify his already increasingly
authoritarian rule by
implementing a three-month state of emergency,
temporarily suspending the European Convention on Human
Rights, and
removing tens of thousands of employees from military and
government positions.
And as Turkey continues to takes steps toward increasingly
illiberal democracy, a big winner of the failed coup is Russian
President Vladimir Putin. Anna Borshchevskaya, an Ira Weiner fellow at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy,
writes in The Hill that the coup attempt will force Erdogan
and Putin toward a closer relationship as Turkey moves further
away from the West and its demands for human rights and open
democracy.
This budding new relationship is already on display,
Borshchevskaya writes, citing Middle East expert Alexander
Shumilin, by the fact that Erdogan has accused the coup
organizers of also being responsible for the downing of a Russian
fighter plane by Turkey in November. That incident
caused a precipitous decline in the relations between the two
countries, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov telling
reporters that the incident seemed like a “planned provocation.”
So, as Ankara seeks to throw the coup’s plotters under the bus
for all manner of failed Turkish policy and inner-societal
problems, Borshchevskaya
notes that Putin will also use this time to better influence
Turkey’s foreign policy — particularly in Syria.
Borshchevskaya also
translates a statement from Ruslan Pukhov, the director of
the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, given to
the Russian publication Kommersant, in which he says Erdogan
“will have neither the energy nor resources to help pro-Turkish
oppositionists in Syria.”
Essentially, Turkey may be significantly less capable of carrying
on its foreign policy opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad
after the coup attempt. This could hamper the effectiveness of
rebel groups that have relied on Turkey for support and
strengthen both Russia and Syria’s hand in the region.
But all in all, the greatest benefit to Putin from the coup will
be further instability and strife within a critical NATO ally on
the vanguard of the increasingly unstable Middle East.
