RUSSIA AND TURKEY: A CURE FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA

Abstract

Russia’s present relations with Turkey can be best described as schizophrenic. On the one hand, the Turks and the Russians have never had such amicable contacts—and on such an order of magnitude— as since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Shuttling small-retail Russian traders have turned Istanbul into a major hub of their commercial operations, whose volume rivals the official commercial turnover between the two countries. Antalya, along with other seaside resorts on the Turkish Mediterranean, has replaced the Crimea as the favourite vacation address for those Russians who can afford to go on holiday. Turkish construction workers are literally giving a new look to Moscow by building new dazzling business headquarters for Russia’s new rich—or rebuilding the seats of political power, such as the State Duma or the once-shelled White House of the government. Thousands of Russian military officers who have returned from Germany and their family members are lucky to reside in modern living quarters built for them by Turkish workers—with Bonn’s money. In a word, the Russians and the Turks have never been intermingling and co-operating so closely, and for so much mutual advantage, in the economic sphere as in the last five or six years.