Turkey is the one country where Russia and Ukraine are prepared to face each other across a table rather than over a gun. While I can’t sit in on negotiations while I’m here, many local academics and lobby groups have indirect and even direct contact with the negotiators.
The Turks are fed up with war. The middle-aged ones live with the memories of their forefathers who survived a world war, and nearly everyone else has a traumatic recollection of every other war that has since been waged in their immediate proximity. One mantra is repeated over and over in all discussions: The war in Ukraine must not escalate.
The Turks regard their neutrality in the conflict as historic and crucial given the geopolitical reality of this part of Europe and Asia. They believe it is a relic of the Cold War.
The destruction of Mariupol and the massacre in Bucha are the result of a hegemonic battle between East and West, the Russians and Americans, according to a Turkish academic with Russian links.
A professor at Istanbul University said Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy merely provided the theatre for this macabre puppet show. Distrust of the Americans is deep-rooted across their world, but even more pertinent in Turkey. Wherever the US tried to enforce a neoliberal ideology, they left behind a battlefield in chaos: Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Uganda and Vietnam all carry the scars of America’s warmongering and obsession with a hegemonic project, my conversation partners claimed.
Turkey has been knocking on the EU’s door for membership for nearly 15 years, with little success.
It’s Russia vs the US, plus five talking points from ‘Vrye Weekblad’
Here’s what’s hot in the latest edition of the Afrikaans digital weekly
Image: Oleksandr Ratushniak/Reuters
Turkey is the one country where Russia and Ukraine are prepared to face each other across a table rather than over a gun. While I can’t sit in on negotiations while I’m here, many local academics and lobby groups have indirect and even direct contact with the negotiators.
The Turks are fed up with war. The middle-aged ones live with the memories of their forefathers who survived a world war, and nearly everyone else has a traumatic recollection of every other war that has since been waged in their immediate proximity. One mantra is repeated over and over in all discussions: The war in Ukraine must not escalate.
The Turks regard their neutrality in the conflict as historic and crucial given the geopolitical reality of this part of Europe and Asia. They believe it is a relic of the Cold War.
The destruction of Mariupol and the massacre in Bucha are the result of a hegemonic battle between East and West, the Russians and Americans, according to a Turkish academic with Russian links.
A professor at Istanbul University said Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy merely provided the theatre for this macabre puppet show. Distrust of the Americans is deep-rooted across their world, but even more pertinent in Turkey. Wherever the US tried to enforce a neoliberal ideology, they left behind a battlefield in chaos: Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Uganda and Vietnam all carry the scars of America’s warmongering and obsession with a hegemonic project, my conversation partners claimed.
Turkey has been knocking on the EU’s door for membership for nearly 15 years, with little success.
Only R10 for the first month!
The Americans are trying to establish a working relationship with the Turks, but as far as they are concerned this is only an effort to gain power over the East and Russia. In 2002, during the war in Iraq, Turkey agreed to the use of the Incirlik air force base in the south but did not allow forces to be deployed from Turkish soil.
When the Turks bought S400 missile defence systems from the Russians, it created enormous political tension with the US and Nato. The US booted Turkey off the F-15 fighter plane project and imposed sanctions against Turkey’s military industry; hardly the best way to make friends in this part of the world.
With the war in Ukraine, US president Joe Biden asked Turkey to put the S300 and S400 missile systems at Zelenskyy’s disposal, but Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is rumoured to have refused.
The Turks do not want to be involved in the US hegemonic project. It will be the death knell for Turkey’s role as negotiator. But Turkey has also refused the Russian navy access via the Black Sea.
It is our third birthday this week, and as a gift to you, you can read this Friday’s edition of Vrye Weekblad for free.
Must-read articles in this week’s Vrye Weekblad
>> Browse the full April 8 edition
FREE TO READ — HAPPY FUTURE! | To celebrate our birthday, we asked Michael Jordaan, Mark Barnes, Roelf Meyer, Cobus Bester, Kobus Meiring, Haidee Muller-Isaacs, Nico Scheepers, Ruda Landman, Derek Hanekom, Beer Adriaanse, Willa Boezak, Quinton Adams, Piet Croucamp and Anthoni van Nieuwkerk to write about where the country is headed and how we will get there.
FREE TO READ — THE WEEK IN POLITICS | Max du Preez writes that Steve Hofmeyr looks and sounds like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and about Julius Malema, who likes Johann Rupert’s wine but wants to take his farm, and Kgalema Motlanthe, who sideswiped the ANC.
FREE TO READ — SLAWAT FOR THE DARK DAYS | Anastasia de Vries says a former student who was labelled an “angry young woman” turned into a peaceful young man with a shy smile. “Write my story,” he asked, “and add that I am at peace not, that I am happy”.
FREE TO READ — NOT A CHURCH OUTFIT | Fashions come and go, but there will always be one child dying to be different, and using clothes to achieve their goal.
FREE TO READ — SHUT UP, SNOB! | You can never be honest with a snob. You can’t say “I love SA despite everything. This place’s stories are close to my heart. I am willing to die here”.
READ MORE:
The ghosts of apartheid, plus five talking points from ‘Vrye Weekblad’
The battle for the soul of SA, plus five talking points from ‘Vrye Weekblad’
This is Africa’s war too, plus five talking points from Vrye Weekblad
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