Erdogan must change his geopolitical orientation

Interview with Alexander Dugin

Vladimir Putin received a message from Recep Erdogan, in which the Turkish leader expressed his interest in resolving the issue on the Su-24 pilot's death. Is it “better late than without Russia?”

Alexander Dugin (D): It is very important news. After the death of our pilot, Moscow categorically refused to talk to Turkey on anything before their apology. And all these months, we really were on the verge of a real war.

Erdogan said that he did not know what specific steps Moscow expected from him. Was he cunning, or did he actually not understand?

D: We should take into account the entire political situation in Turkey and around it. Erdogan faced so many events recently, I think he changed his attitude. Firstly, blocking our economic relationship was a strong hit for the Turkish economy, now it is on the verge of bankruptcy. It turns out that the well-being of the country depended on Russia. Secondly, the United States began to support the Syrian Kurds, thus dealing a stab from behind by its NATO partners. So, it is between a rock and a hard place: between the Americans, who do not think to save Erdogan, on the contrary, they want to replace him with a more and more pro-American person like Davutoğlu, and on the other hand, the lack of relations with us. Moreover, Erdogan called Putin, but he did not answer the phone. By all possible means, he tried somehow to unblock the situation, but the answer was the same: an apology first. Thus the policy of hardness, individual, personal hardness, had its own effect.
Erdogan explained the history with the pilot. In fact, there is a pro-American plot against Erdogan in Turkey. It was Davutoğlu and Fethullah Gülen’s sect who wanted to put Erdogan in a difficult situation, and then remove him. The faster he dealt with this, the sooner he found an argument to explain what it was: because of their provocation a Russian pilot crashed, and when the internal investigation appeared in time, Erdogan was misinformed. And now he has reason to apologize because he did not know the circumstances or did not want to know from the very beginning.

So does he now look bad to the general public?

D: Now he'll get all the benefits from the friendship with Russia. And they are enormous. He made some steps towards us, he apologized. Then a compensation for the aircraft will happen, certain payments to the family; it is very important symbolically. I think it will radically change the position of Erdogan, and he will be in a completely different situation. But it will require a lot of new activities. It is not just the implementation of the Russian requirements, but logical steps, until the withdrawal from NATO and the reorientation of Turkey to a completely different Eurasian, rather than pro-Western, Atlanticist way of development.

What will the further actions of Russia be?

D: Of course, I think that we will not be in a hurry. The first step will be a meeting between the Turkish Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu and Lavrov on Friday at the Sochi forum of the Black Sea countries. But if we begin to unlock this avalanche, it would not be just a return to the old relations; it would be an entirely new model of Russian-Turkish relations, which would exclude such precedents. And at the same time Erdogan must change his geopolitical orientation.