REGIONAL RIVALRY COMES TO A HEAD
The downing of an SU-24 jet by Turkey will go down as the first time since the start of the Cold War that a Nato member has shot down a Russian military aircraft. Yet it is but the latest twist in centuries of tangled, and frequently tense, relations between two countries which geography, history and religion have made rivals.
That rivalry took concrete shape from the 16th century with the emergence of two great empires. Moscow saw itself as the third Rome, bulwark of Eastern Christianity after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks. The Ottomans in turn were expanding their own empire into the Middle East and the Balkans, populated by Orthodox Slavs of whom Orthodox Russia was a protector.
Inevitably, the competing interests generated conflicts. Best known in the West is the Crimean War of 1853-56, pitting Turkey, Britain and France against Russia, and caused in part by Moscow’s demand to exercise protection over the Christian subjects of the Sultan. That war ended indecisively. But not so the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78, which produced a clear Russian victory and the creation of an independent Bulgarian state.
World War I led to the destruction of both empires, and drastic regime changes in Russia and Turkey. At first, ties between the new Soviet Union and secularised Kemalist Turkey improved, and Russia abandoned claims to parts of northeastern Turkey and the Turkish Straits. But they deteriorated in 1936 when the Convention of Montreux returned full control of the straits to Ankara.
In the World War II, as the Soviet Union bore the full brunt of the Nazi onslaught, Turkey remained neutral, angering Moscow by letting German warships use the straits. In 1945, Stalin demanded a share in their control. The West refused, and throughout the Cold War, Turkey and Russia were on opposite sides.
With the demise of the Soviet Union, Turko-Russian relations again improved steadily. But even before the clash over Syria, Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and its interference in eastern Ukraine were alarming Ankara. Now Russia and Turkey are at odds again: the former in an alliance with Iran to prop up the Assad regime, while Turkey is part of a front with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States determined to oust Mr Assad.