The Great Game by Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Ahmet Insel, journalist, writer and academic, explains that the Turkish president knows how to position himself in the crisis that the European Union, Ukraine and Russia are going through. If Recep Tayyip Erdogan knows how to be tough with some EU member states, even if he threatens others, such as Greece and the Republic of Cyprus, he nevertheless knew how to invest in economic and military agreements with Ukraine. With Vladimir Putin, taking opposing positions with the Russian President, for example during the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Our guest Ahmet Insel allowed us to understand the strategy of Recep Tayyip Erdogan regarding the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Thus, the Turkish president returned to the world news by confirming his membership in NATO, and thus opposing Russia, but without applying the sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States on Moscow.

On the other hand, the advance of Russian forces on the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea makes Recep Tayyip Erdogan fear – if Russia captures this coast – face to face with Russia, and Turkey represents NATO in this region, where no Georgia. Or Bulgaria or Romania can hardly achieve geopolitical balance.

But if Vladimir Putin is a chess player, then Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a Tafla player. Tavla, backgammon, or backgammon in the West is to have all your pawns spin around the chessboard and take them out first against your opponent, but with each dice, you risk reshaping your game each time, good or bad. and thus to resume, modify or imagine a different strategy. Like ancestral board games, also like Go, they are also often misunderstood geopolitical tactics.

And as Ahmet Insel reminds us, Recep Tayyip Erdogan knows how to play at different tables, having already kept it. Eggs in different baskets“Ukrainian and Russian NATO. This is how Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears as a potential mediator in a supposed solution to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, alongside Israel.

Here, Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes pledges of “goodwill” to his NATO allies, despite the fact that President Biden, who works for peace in Ukraine, is almost never held in high esteem, hoping in return that his allies will allow him to do as he pleases in Turkey . – Lack of respect for human rights – Occupation in Syria and Northern Cyprus, claims on the Aegean Sea.

As Ahmet Insel points out to us, if the Turkish president did not apply sanctions to Russia, causing Europeans and Americans to blink, it must be seen, for him, to benefit from the denial of riches and young Russian graduates, as seen in Georgia and Finland. But for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is also a matter of betting on the arrival of European companies into Turkish territory, leaving Russia, which will be a breath of fresh air for the Turkish economy.

Thus, Recep Tayyip Erdogan knows how to find a place in international diplomacy by trying to restore the image of his authority one year before the Turkish legislative and presidential elections, and especially at the dawn of the centenary of the founding of the Turkish Republic, 2023.

Similarly, if Europe saw the fall of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and German empires in 1919, then a century later, will the European Union see the birth of new empires, Russian, Chinese and Turkish, all on the same continent? Thus providing an answer to Paul Valery’s question, “Europe, the little head of the Asian continent?”Seeing the Eurasian dream of Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan come true? As for the American “ally” of the European Union, it will always be separated from it by an ocean, that is, the open sea …