The two angry men on Europe’s borders: loud, proud, and impossible to ignore
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Version 0 of 1. Two angry men. They govern large countries that border Europe. They rail against the west, which is at great pains to find the right way to deal with them. It seems that hardly a week goes by without Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Vladimir Putin lashing out at the United States or Europe. In a recent diatribe in front of Istanbul university students, Erdogan warned against modern-day “Lawrences of Arabia” trying to undermine Turkish power. Last week, Putin hit out at the US during a meeting of the Valdai Club in Sochi, his annual PR forum. The Russian leader compared his country to a bear who will “not ask permission” to act and “will not let anyone have its taiga [land]”. Putin denounced American “unilateral diktats” and “legal nihilism”, painting over his own unilateralism and illegality over the annexation of Crimea. Regional crises in Syria and Ukraine have triggered this new bout of estrangement. Erdogan resents having been put under pressure by the US over his refusal to intervene directly in Syria against Islamic State (Isis). Putin has framed the Ukrainian conflict as the consequence of Euro-Atlantic manoeuvres into Russia’s neighbourhood. He casts his policy as the defence of ethnic Russians abroad. The Turkish and Russian presidents together govern nearly 220 million citizens. Their countries have registered strong growth since the beginning of the century. They want to throw their weight around and this has, it seems, caught many people off guard. Western diplomacy has been scrambling for answers. Erdogan and Putin have much in common. Both in their early 60s, they have been in power for a long time (since 1999 for Putin, since 2002 for Erdogan), holding either the position of prime minister or president. They aspire to be fathers of the nation. Their political narrative mixes nationalism and anti-liberal traditionalism. Their vision of society, as well as their methods of governance, run counter to the values Europe promotes. They concentrate power, repress opposition, restrict media freedom, control the internet, and have cowed the judiciary. Both play religious cards. Erdogan’s ideology is that of the Muslim Brotherhood: he sees himself as the defender of Sunni Muslims in the Middle East. Putin uses the Orthodox church to boost patriotism, and strengthen Russian influence in the Slavic world. Restoring national pride is central. Their historical narrative is about victimisation by the west: Erdogan has attacked the “making of Sykes-Picot agreements”, in a reference to the 1916 Franco-British carve-up of the Ottoman empire; Putin vituperates against the “so-called victors in the cold war” that have “decided to reshape the world” and “committed many follies”. The self-inflicted bankruptcy of former empires is rarely mentioned, nor the legitimate aspirations of the peoples they dominated. Things weren’t always this bad between them and the west. Putin initially took steps to align himself with George W Bush’s “war on terror” after 9/11 and later played along with Obama’s “reset” strategy. The European Union offered Russia a strategic partnership. Erdogan was initially seen as a reformer who would lead his country towards Europe. Turkey was also lauded in the early stages of the Arab spring as a model of a secular state combining democracy and Islam. Both claim they were deceived by the west. European countries rapidly gave Erdogan and Turkey the cold shoulder treatment. Putin says Russia’s strategic interests were never taken into account by Nato or the EU. I recently asked several Istanbul-based liberal intellectuals what they thought. They all expressed dissatisfaction with Europeans, something one also hears a lot among Russian liberals. They point to the extreme difficulty of countering Erdogan’s rhetoric by appealing to European values, precisely because Turks have stopped believing Europe is even interested in them. A poll carried out this year (the GMF Transatlantic Trends survey) nevertheless showed that 53% of Turks believe Turkey’s EU membership would be a good thing for their country, the highest figure in four years. The same study indicated that 52% of Russians hold an unfavourable view of the EU, compared with 24% two years ago. An important common feature between Erdogan and Putin is their obsession with conspiracy theories. All political opposition is ascribed to western-led plots. Both have faced popular protests in recent years. In June 2013 Istanbul’s Gezi park youth movement spread to many Turkish cities. In 2011 and 2012 hundreds of thousands of urban middle-class Russians demonstrated against Putin’s rule. The upheavals were repressed and seem to have fizzled out, drowned out in waves of resurgent nationalism. Channelling public opinion against the west is politically convenient. Erdogan’s foreign policy failures risk creating further tensions on the Kurdish issue. Putin faces western sanctions that hit an economy already weakened by the fall in global oil prices and massive capital flight. Yet for all the similarities there are fundamental differences. Erdogan and Putin disagree over Syria: regime change in Damascus, as promoted by Erdogan, is anathema to Putin. Russia has nuclear weapons and gas. Nato membership is ultimately Turkey’s sole protection against insecurity in the Middle East. Erdogan asked for the deployment of US Patriot missiles in 2012 when the Syria war risked spilling over. In his Sochi speech Putin warned that the Ukrainian conflict “will certainly not be the last”. He seems to be trying to set a price on Russian restraint with its neighbours, aiming to force a redrawing of Europe’s security architecture after having severely shaken it. He seeks a kind of veto power for Russia over other sovereign countries, and doesn’t hesitate to brandish Russia’s military arsenal in doing so. Unlike Putin, Erdogan does not attempt to threaten western countries. He just complains about them. Loudly and passionately. One of these angry men is necessarily more amenable than the other. It could make sense to bear this in mind when working out the next steps of western and European policy. • Join Natalie Nougayrède, Rowena Mason, Stuart Millar and Hugh Muir for Guardian Newsroom, a behind-the-scenes visit to our offices on 5 November. Discuss the rise of Ukip and hear how the news of the day shapes the headlines of tomorrow. Book here. #guardianlive |