In 2020, any remaining illusions around Russian-Turkish relations have been dispelled. For years, any strategic divergences were covered up by acrobatic feats of propaganda. The 2015 ‘stab in the back’, for instance, was soon replaced by ‘friendship’ and reflections on ‘Turkey’s disappointment with NATO’. Footage of the two presidents eating ice cream together in 2019 was so sweet that the supplies of the S-400 to Ankara were perceived as attracting Turkey in the latter’s confrontation with the West. Foreign politicians and analysts also played into the hands of Russian propaganda here. Many saw Ankara’s actions from a lens of an impending exit from the Western orbit. Even the ardent anti-Turkish (or rather, anti-Turkic) experts on Russian TV had to refrain from their ‘I warned you’ and ‘there was a reason we fought the Turks so many times’.
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