What If Turkey Wanted Crimea Back?

Vladimir Putin has made it abundantly clear that he is unbending regarding the war in Ukraine.

At most, he appears willing to accede to turning that country into a pro-Russian puppet state. And he certainly wants the Ukrainian land he has occupied, including Crimea, recognized legally as part of Russia.

A real pro vs. the amateurs

Meanwhile, the United States seems now led by a bunch of foreign policy amateurs led by Donald Trump, the great geopolitical strategist.

Grave doubts are in order that they can be relied upon to act as an honest broker toward Russia in any meaningful sense of the word, to say nothing of looking after Ukraine’s interests as a true ally should.

The community of nations definitely needs an innovative idea

Given that, the community of nations definitely needs a new idea to temper Putin’s territorial acquisitiveness. Ideally, a nation with a reasonable counterclaim to block Putin’s demands on Ukrainian territory.

The best-positioned nation to initiate a proper blocking move is Turkey, Russia’s neighbor on its Southern flank.

Turkey has the second-largest army in NATO, numbering one million strong. Its soldiers are experienced and well-armed. Its military has far more operational discipline and intelligence than Russia’s human-wasting army.

A look back into history

Turkey and Russia go way back, and their relationship has historically been very far from friendly. The Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire fought several major wars from the 17th century onward.

Almost all of them ended with the Ottomans losing territory, which was either annexed by Russia or became independent.

Eventually, Russia occupied the entire northern shore of the Black Sea and then set its sights on the Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In the 1877-78 war, Russian troops came close to capturing Istanbul.

In the First World War, when Turkey fought on the side of the Central Powers, Britain and France agreed to let Russia annex the European parts of modern Turkey as well as much of Anatolia. Only the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia prevented an effective dismantling of Turkey.

The Crimea belongs to whom again?

In the contemporary context, things become truly interesting if one looks at the Crimean Peninsula. The home of the Muslim Crimean Khanate, it had been an Ottoman protectorate for 300 years before(!) Russian Empress Catherine II annexed it in 1783.

That is a significant fact, given that Putin loves to use presumable “historical” facts as justification for his desire for territorial expansion.

So what if Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned the tables on Putin and demanded Crimea back – and assuming that the government Kyiv, whose internationally recognized territory it remains eleven years after Crimea’s occupation by Russia, acquiesced?

Turkey’s ambiguous role

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Turkey has played an ambiguous role, sitting on two chairs at once. Unlike other members of NATO, it refused to impose sanctions on Russia.

In addition, the Istanbul Airport has become a hub for Russians travelling to Europe since Western airlines have refused to fly to Russia since the start of the war. Turkey may also be supplying some sanctioned goods to Russia.

On the other hand, it sold Bayraktar drones to Ukraine, which were extremely useful in early fighting. It is also building a drone factory in Ukraine and is keeping Russian navy ships out of the Black Sea.

Erdogan’s gargantuan ambitions

Meanwhile, Erdogan has emerged as a major political leader in the Muslim world. He has accumulated a string of successes by supporting Muslim Azerbaijan in its war with Christian Armenia as well as, notably, by backing the winners in the Syrian civil war.

Erdogan, who sees himself as a historic figure, would definitely love to get back a major piece of land which the Ottomans lost to Russia.

The particular charm for Erdogan of taking back Crimea is that, with that move, he would also be protecting another oppressed Muslim people – the Crimean Tatars.

Focus on the Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars, the original inhabitants of the peninsula, were falsely accused by Joseph Stalin of collaborating with the Germans during the Second World War.

Over a period of three days in May 1944, some 180,000 Tatars, mostly the elderly, women and children, were loaded into cattle cars and deported to Central Asia. An unknown number of them died along the way. Their houses were confiscated and given over to arriving Russian settlers.

The Tatars spent nearly half a century in exile and were allowed back to Crimea only in the waning days of communism. Small wonder they were bitterly opposed to the Russian occupation of their peninsula in 2014.

Today, Tatar activists in Crimea are being routinely arrested or kidnapped by Vladimir Putin’s police.

Putin historically defenseless against Erdogan

The beauty of Erdogan claiming Crimea is that Putin won’t have a leg to stand on. He justifies his claim on Ukraine by citing ancient history when Moscow was founded by a Kyivan princeling sometime in the 12th century.

When interviewed by American rightwing influencer Tucker Carson, Putin mouthed a somewhat deranged 30-minute history lesson about all those half-forgotten events. By Putin’s own logic, Turkey’s claim to Crimea long predates Russia’s.

A Ukrainian-Turkish deal

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in dire need of new allies.

Ukraine could agree to honor a Turkish claim less so by ceding Crimea to Ankara outright, but rather by proposing autonomy to the peninsula under joint Turkish-Ukrainian authority.

It so happens that Turkey is a great ally to have. Just consider that, unlike many Western European countries, Turkey has well-developed arms production. It has the strongest navy in the Black Sea.

Whether the United States under Trump is rejecting its traditional global commitments or is becoming an outright ally of Putin’s Russia, Ukraine can use Turkey as a strong ally.

Conclusion

Turkey’s support is critical for Ukraine. And to give Erdogan a dog in this fight would be a stroke of brilliance on Kyiv’s part.

Better yet, it would be a deal that Trump, for all his bragging about being a genius negotiator, could never have dreamt up.