Vladimir Putin has postponed his visit to Turkey, planned for October 14-15. Now he plans to come no earlier than November, if will come at all, as relations between the two countries rapidly deteriorate. As expected from the two major regional powers of the Black Sea, Turkey and Russia finally collided due to Syria, and it is unlikely that any of the parties decide to moderate their ambitions. Most likely, the hidden confrontation will only increase and, sooner or later, will result in a direct political conflict.
Official sources report that Russian leader’s visit is postponed to November due to Putin’s tight schedule. Both sides claim that the diametrically opposed positions of the two countries on the Syrian crisis have nothing to do with it.
However, it is simply impossible to believe. Rather, Moscow and Ankara simply try not to “wash dirty linen in public.” “Vedomosti” newspaper source in the Kremlin, for example, suggested that the arrival of the Russian president to the territory of one of the conflict parties could be wrongly interpreted both in Turkey and Syria.
In fact, we are talking about the collision of two ambitious politicians – Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who claims to play a leading role in the Middle East and the Black Sea. Relations between Russia and Turkey, which earlier were treated with caution in Moscow, as one of the countries of NATO, in the time of Putin and Erdogan began to develop very actively.
Of course, there could not be a word about the Russian-Turkish alliance. However, Moscow and Ankara agreed on such sensitive issues as the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the situation in Georgia, related to a possible military conflict between the West and Iran. Both Erdogan, and Putin consider themselves regional leaders, and in personal capacity. Renewed imperial ambitions inevitably leads to a revival of past conflicts.
Ivan Priobrozhenski/ politcom.ru
