After Putin and Erdogan made steps toward reconciling Russian and Turkey, the Russian folks changed their mind as well. Not so long ago, you could see most Russians being hostile to everything that comes from Turkey. Now, this is no longer the case. At least it seems so.
However, the situation change once again when a week ago, Turkey invaded Syria to start an counter-terrorist operation against the ISIS and the Syrian rebels. Turkey claimed they are determined to back the security for themselves and their borders.
Later on that day, Turkish air force was reported to destroy 11 out of 12 ISIS units close to the border between Turkey and Syria. Shortly after, Turkey was visited by Joe Biden, U.S. Vice President. According to TRT Haber, the Prime Minister of Turkey told the reporters that U.S. A. is ready to assist Turkey in exchange for the promise to keep YPG and PYD squads away from the territories to the West of the Euphrates. Most likely, this means that 2/3 of Syria is going to be controlled by the allied US-Turkish forces. At the same time President Erdogan urges the U.S. authorities to decide who is the true ally – Turkey or Kurdish PYD party (which is seen by Turkey as a terrorist organization).
As for the Russian-Turkish relations, it’s difficult to say what they are going to be in the future given the mentioned visit of the U.S. Vice President. It seems that Erdogan keeps on raising the Kurdish question with both Russia and the USA. And the latter seems to favor Turkey just to spoil the relations between Turkey and Russia once again.
Many of those analyst saying that Putin is a great strategist and politician are amazed at the current state of affairs, not to mention Russian folks who first hated Turkey than stopped that and got ready to resume their tourist trips to Turkey and now they may be forced to hate the neighbor again when following the Kremlin’s mood.
That said, Putin has two options: to quit Syria or to dive deeper into the war and spoil relations with Turkey even more. In the worst case scenario, Russia would be hard to handle one of the most powerful NATO armies.
