* The difference between the two is that Erdogan has been very successful, and Putin has been a failure. Turkey is now more influential internationally than at any time since the Ottoman Empire collapsed. It has a balanced economy, and low priced Turkish manufacturers of fairly sophisticated products are taking market share in Euope and competing with the Chinese. Meanwhile Russia is still a dig-and-deliver state that survives by selling off its natural resources and is now almost bankrupt. Putin has managed to weaken Russian soft power to the extent that even most of Ukraine is now violently anti-Russian. Erdogan has the advantage that most Turkish elites, even the ones opposed to him, are patriots and nationalists and will generally support Turkish interests. Rich Turks invest in Turkish companies. Rich Russians invest in real estate in London. Putin has the disadvantage that most Russian elites, even the ones that nominally support Putin, are interested only in accumulating wealth and power and will betray their own mothers given the chance.
* I wonder what is up with those disloyal “Russian” elites. There must be some possible explanation for this, but I just can’t imagine what it could be ….
* Imagine if the United States had hostile relations, to the point of low intensity wars, with Canada and Mexico, was sanctioned by and expelled from the G-7 and had an economy that was shrinking by 3 or 4 percent in real terms per year with no end in sight. Overseeing this remarkable state of affairs was a strutting president in his 15th year in office.
Putin has backed his nation into a situation that may require him to become even more dangerous and reckless. The only economic solution he has to his nation’s problems is to raise the global oil price and the only way he can do that is by expanding the war in Syria into the great oil fields of Iraq and the Persian Gulf! His geo-political position to the West is deteriorating too as Europe rearms. Time and technology are passing his nation by. He is desperate.
* Putin and Erdogan are not that similar, except in the mind of the Western media. As Alexander Mercouris recently said, “Erdogan is someone who far more closely resembles the Western image of Putin than Putin himself does.” Mercouris explains some of the discrepancies between the real Putin and his image in the West.
In the NYT piece I like the quote by Ivan Krastev (who for once did not compare Putin to Stalin,) “Not looking weak is something very important for both Putin and Erdogan. Neither knows how to retreat, nor apologize.” This is terrible! Fortunately, America has a leader who has no problem looking weak and who retreats and apologizes all the time.
* Turkey’s economy indeed improved during the Erdogan period, but the country is now involved in disputes with almost all its neighbors — Greece, Syria, Iran, the Kurds, Russia. It’s not getting along too famously with the EU, the USA or Israel either. What that article could elaborate on a little more is that Erdogan is corrupt corrupt corrupt. His son is selling ISIS oil to eastern Asia.
* Contextually, they have something in common.
Both are ‘traditionalist’ quasi-autocrats ruling over a major nation somewhere between modernity and the third world.
But that’s about as far as it goes.
Putin is rational and has a sense of limits. He is also cautious. It’s not difficult to know what he wants. He got involved in Syria as the last resort.
Erdogan, in contrast, is contradictory, impetuous, petty, confused, craven, and full of bluster.
Russia’s role in the Middle East makes sense. Putin wants good relations with Israel and all the legit ruling powers.
Erdogan’s methods are all over the map.
Turkey is pro-Israel, anti-Israel. Turkey was pro-Assad, then anti-Assad. Had Assad’s power been stable, Turkey would not have aided the rebels. But Erdogan was so sure Assad would fall and aided the rebels. If Assad survives, Erdogan is ashamed to have to deal with a man(right across the border) whom he tried to destroy. So, Erdogan tries his bestt desperately to destroy Assad.
It’s like Sollozo the Turk failed to kill Don Corleone and so plots to try again. And Michael knows this.
Putin has been forced into tough decisions, as in Georgia and Ukraine. He doesn’t look for trouble.
Erdogan looks for trouble.
Maybe Russia feels as a major power simply due to its size and resources.
In contrast, Turkey’s neo-Ottoman-ish sense of importance depends on being at the center of crises.
So, Erdogan keeps courting crisis after crisis.
A bear need not make trouble to be feared and respected.
A badger has to keep growling that it is tough and badass.
Also, Putin is a secularist despite his professed Christianity and revival of religion in Russia.
Erdogan is far closer to certain aspects of Islamic faith. He is less rational.
Erdogan’s one big payoff in crisis may be EU’s plan to allow Turkey into the EU.
The refugee gambit that made EU afraid of the Muslim tide is making EU allow Turkey into the union as the favored Euro-Muslim nation.
‘We will take you Turks if you Turks keep the other Muzzies out.’
It’s like ‘we will accept you mulattos if you work with us keep out the blacks.’
Not gonna work.
PS. erdogan is more like Netanyahu.
Both live on crisis and are full of nasty bluster.
* Let’s be realistic the Russian economy is basically a gas station with an army. Besides natural resources and armaments, there’s very few things that Russia can produce competitively on the global stage. You can’t discount that the handover from Yeltsin to Putin coincided with the trough of a multi-decade commodity super-cycle. Add in that global military spending has also nearly doubled during the same period, particularly among the middle-income non-Western nations that love buying Russian weapons.
* McCain’s line about Russia being a gas station hasn’t been true for a while. In 2000, Russia’s natural resource rents (which include not only oil and gas but also coal, minerals, and timber) were 43% of GDP. In 2013 (last available year) they fell to 18%. The figures are from World Bank.
It’s true that majority of Russian goods are not competitive on the world stage*. Russia has been cut off from the world economy for so long, it will take decades for them to re-enter it. But what did happen, and I guess it’s an achievement of Putin’s economic team, is that Russian goods have largely become competitive on the internal market. If you think that’s not important, you should look into the history of Asian tiger economies.
But more competitive than you may think. For example, I recently discovered that Russia quietly exports combine harvesters to America and Europe.
* Russia makes weapon systems that are competitive on the world market now. They also export wheat at competive prices (without starving themselves as in USSR days). They can launch and build communication satellites, something very few countries can do.
* A century ago, Aboriginals had terrible problems with tuberculosis and alcoholism. Now they just have alcoholism. Perhaps focused medical research could someday solve their alcoholism problem the way it has mostly solved their TB problem? But it might require finding out which genes make them so vulnerable to alcohol.
