The New Coalition of States Under the Auspices of Turkey – The New Threat to the US, EU, Russia

Given that current Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is an Islam-nationalist and provides all kinds of support to those states that were part of the Ottoman Empire and more generally to those peoples who speak the Turkish language, an informal alliance is gradually being formed to NATO standards in Southeast Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East under the supervision of Turkey.

Turkey’s Geopolitical Objectives

Turkey and Russia have managed to reduce tensions and as they support and continue to support rival camps in Syria, Yemen, and Libya by forming an alliance defined by their current formed interests across their areas of interest.

by Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis

©The law of intellectual property is prohibited in any way unlawful use/appropriation of this article, with heavy civil and criminal penalties for the infringer.

In Syria and the South Caucasus, Israel, and Turkey, which have close economic interests among them, also have poor relations with common geopolitical objectives. Both states oppose Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s alliance with both Iran and Russia.

In the South Caucasus region, Israel supplies 40% of its oil energy needs from Azerbaijan and considers this country Iran’s rival awe. Iran in turn supports Armenia and Russia against Azerbaijan.

Israel provides training and weapons systems to Azerbaijan and Georgia.

The Geopolitical Objectives of the West and Russia in the South Caucasus and Central Asia

Azerbaijan is an energy giant, and its geographical location is in a highly geostrategic region of Central Asia and the wider Middle East. The fact that Azerbaijan is one of the main suppliers of fossil fuels to Turkey, the EU and Israel automatically becomes a potential US ally whose main core of their strategy is against the EU’s growing energy dependence on Russia.

Armenia, despite being a member of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and a member of the Euro-Asian Economic Union, was not militarily assisted by the CSTO in the recent Nagorno-Karabakh war.

This was also a correct decision on the part of the CSTO because Armenia was not attacked by Azerbaijan, but the war was taking place in the self-proclaimed Republic of Arcach (Nagorno-Karabakh) which is not a member of the CSTO.

Turkey and Azerbaijan are linked by ethnic and linguistic ties and call each other ‘brother states’. Turkey maintains the same relationship with the Crimean Tatars.

Crimea, in turn, for six consecutive centuries belonged to the Ottoman Empire, a region that automatically enters the crosshairs of Tayyip Erdogan’s grandiose fanaticism.

Crimean Tatars

In the 19^th and20^th centuries, respectively, millions of Crimean Tatars fled after Russian and Soviet persecutions respectively in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, respectively. Half the Tatar population that remained in Crimea were wiped out by the ethnological cleansing implemented by Joseph Stalin.

Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, more than 25,000 Tatars have fled to Ukraine. Some six million Crimean Tatars live in Turkey.

Given that this population has the right to vote in elections held in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-nationalist ideology automatically “embraces” them and at the same time uses them as a tool to create a question of their return to an “independent” now Crimea.

Turkey’s energy detoxification from Russia

Turkey’s military support for Azerbaijan during the war in the Nagorno-Karabakh region is in return for the agreement between Turkey’s main energy supplier to become Azerbaijan, pushing Russia’s lead as Turkey’s main energy supplier.

This agreement between Turkey and Azerbaijan, which makes Azerbaijan the main supplier of natural gas to Turkey, was reached five months before the outbreak of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Natural gas pipelines starting from Azerbaijan’s Shah Denizli region pass through Turkey to the EU (Trans Adriatic Pipeline). In this way Azerbaijan becomes an important exporting country of natural gas to the EU market for the first time, thus achieving the US policy of wanting Russia’s energy side to the EU.

The New informal Poland-Ukraine-Turkey-Azerbaijan Alliance circling Russia

Poland and Turkey are NATO members. The geopolitical axis between them is complemented by Ukraine (which Poland and especially Ukraine has chronic differences with Russia, both for Crimea and for Eastern Ukraine). In this case Russia informally circles geographically on the eastern and south-eastern borders of Europe (including the Black Sea as a natural barrier).

If Azerbaijan’s geographical position is added to this alliance, then this encircling extends as far as Central Asia, over the soft security underbelly of Russia, which is the South Caucasus.

Ukraine and Azerbaijan are long-standing pro-NATO. On the other hand, these countries (Ukraine, Azerbaijan, the South Caucasus region in genal) Russia considers them to be in its exclusive sphere of influence and that the West should not be involved in all kinds of processes within them.

Turkey has not recognized and does not recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea because of the Tatar ethnicity.

Since the end of 2018, Turkey and Ukraine have identified common interests among the “security” of the Black Sea. Turkey along with the UK and the US support the creation of a Western-equipped Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Ukraine is buying military equipment from Turkey, and they are working closely together to build a range of military products and weapons systems.

In 2018-2019, Turkey strongly supported the Christian Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch in his choice to cede Autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, thus excluding the exercise of control of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

In this way, the Russian Orthodox Church is no longer the largest among the 14 Orthodox Churches and is similar in size to the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Given all this, Turkey will continue to challenge Russia, due to the supply of energy from Azerbaijan to the EU and any support from Turkey to Ukraine, targeting areas annexed from Ukraine to Russia.

To make the allied axis between Poland-Ukraine-Turkey-Azerbaijan compact, the alliance between Turkey and Ukraine must reach the levels between Turkey and Azerbaijan.