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Part 21: The Politics of Leverage

Chapter 78: The Broker on the Bosphorus

Hakan, the Deputy Director of the Eurasia Desk, worked from an office that was less a workspace and more a statement of intent. Located within the sprawling, thousand-room Presidential Complex in Ankara—the Külliye—his soundproofed sanctum offered a commanding view of the geopolitical center of his world. Through the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass, looking north on a clear day, he could almost imagine the silver-blue ribbon of the Bosphorus Strait. To the tourists snapping selfies in Ortaköy, it was a scenic waterway. To Hakan, and to his President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, it was the carotid artery of the world, the ultimate chokepoint, a gift from God and geography that granted Turkey the power of life and death over the Black Sea nations.

Hakan’s workday was a masterclass in controlled geopolitical schizophrenia. His schedule was not divided by tasks, but by allegiances.

His mornings belonged to Kyiv. At precisely 9:00 a.m., he unlocked his encrypted tablet to join a video conference with his liaisons from the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence (GUR). The mood was brisk, professional, and lethal. On the screen, shaky drone feeds showed the blurred gray shapes of a Russian convoy trudging through the mud near Vuhledar. Hakan authorized the transfer of updated targeting telemetry for the Bayraktar TB2 drones—the iconic Turkish-made birds that had humiliated the Russian army in the war’s opening months. The drone manufacturer, Baykar, ran deep in the blood of the state, managed by the President's own son-in-law, a fusion of family business and statecraft that Hakan found entirely natural. As he reviewed the logistics for the next shipment of "Kirpi" mine-resistant armored vehicles to the Ukrainian front, he drafted a press statement for the Foreign Ministry. It condemned the latest Russian missile strike on a civilian market in Konstantinovka in the harshest terms, using words like "barbaric" and "a violation of our shared humanity." It was the voice of a staunch NATO ally, the guardian of the alliance's southern flank.

At noon, he performed the mental ablution of a diplomat, washed his hands of the morning’s allegiances, and turned his chair 180 degrees.

His afternoons belonged to Moscow. The lunch meeting took place in a gilded, neo-Ottoman conference room down the hall, where tea was served in tulip-shaped glasses on silver trays. The guests were heavy men in ill-fitting Italian suits: a delegation from Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy corporation. The conversation was not about war, but about concrete and megawatts. They were finalizing the payment schedules for the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, a massive, twenty-billion-dollar project on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. It was the only place in the world where a NATO member was allowing the Russian state to build, own, and operate critical energy infrastructure. Hakan did not blink at the irony. He navigated the complexities of ruble-lira currency swaps, designed to shield the transaction from the very Western financial sanctions he had implicitly supported that morning. Following this, he reviewed the flow rates for the TurkStream gas pipeline, the vital artery carrying Russian gas under the Black Sea, bypassing Ukraine entirely to heat Turkish homes and European factories.

His final task of the day was the most delicate. It arrived in a courier-sealed envelope, not digital. It contained the file of a high-net-worth individual, a prominent Russian aluminum magnate sanctioned by London and Washington. The file detailed the schematics of the Solaris, a 140-meter superyacht seeking a winter berth. The vessel needed a safe haven, far from the seizing hands of the FBI or the Italian Guardia di Finanza. The marinas of Bodrum and Marmaris were perfect—sun-drenched, luxurious, and emphatically outside the jurisdiction of EU law. Stapled to the berthing request was an application for Turkish citizenship by investment. Hakan signed the approval with a flourish of his Montblanc pen.

As he packed his briefcase, his encrypted phone buzzed. It was a contact from the US Embassy in Ankara, likely calling to complain about the sudden spike in Turkish exports of microchips to Central Asia—a thinly veiled supply line to the Russian military. Hakan let it ring. He saw no contradiction in his day. To him, the Western obsession with "picking a side" was a symptom of imperial decline. The new world was multipolar, transactional, and ruthless. Turkey was not a double agent serving two masters; it was the master of the toll bridge, charging both the cowboy and the bear for the privilege of crossing. In Hakan’s mind, this wasn't hypocrisy; it was the rediscovery of imperial gravity.

The Discourse 78: The Architecture of Active Non-Alignment

78.1 The "Indispensable" Power: From Bridge to Gatekeeper
For decades, Western policymakers relied on a comforting but simplistic metaphor to describe Turkey: the "Bridge between East and West." This image suggested a passive structure, a conduit that connected two distinct worlds but belonged fully to neither. Under the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ankara has decisively dismantled this bridge and replaced it with a toll booth. Turkey has adopted a doctrine of "strategic autonomy" or "active non-alignment," a policy that rejects the binary choice between NATO and Russia. Instead, it leverages Turkey's membership in the Western security architecture not as a binding commitment, but as a negotiating asset to extract concessions from both Washington and Moscow. This double game is not an improvisation; it is a calculated geopolitical strategy designed to make Turkey indispensable. By refusing to fully align with sanctions, Turkey becomes the only credible interlocutor capable of speaking to both sides, positioning itself as the mediator of choice for initiatives like the Black Sea Grain Initiative and prisoner exchanges. In Ankara's calculus, total alignment is total weakness, while ambiguity is power.

78.2 The Pro-Ukraine Ledger: Kinetic Balancing
Turkey’s support for Ukraine, while seemingly contradictory to its courtship of Moscow, is rooted in hard-nosed security calculations regarding the Black Sea balance of power. Historically, the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia were existential rivals, fighting twelve wars over domination of this maritime domain. Ankara views the total domination of the Black Sea by Russia—a potential outcome if Ukraine were to fall—as a direct threat to Turkish sovereignty. Therefore, Turkey has engaged in significant kinetic balancing:

• The Drone Diplomat: The supply of Bayraktar TB2 drones was not merely a commercial transaction but a strategic signal. Delivered when Western powers were still debating the definition of "defensive" weapons, these systems provided Kyiv with an asymmetric capability that checked Russian armor in the critical early phase of the war.

• The Montreux Key: On February 28, 2022, Turkey invoked Article 19 of the 1936 Montreux Convention, legally closing the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits to belligerent warships. While ostensibly a neutral application of law, this move disproportionately crippled the Russian Navy. It prevented Moscow from moving vessels from its Northern and Baltic fleets to reinforce its Black Sea fleet, essentially isolating the Russian maritime assault and enabling Ukraine’s anti-access/area denial strategies to succeed.

78.3 The Pro-Russia Ledger: The Economic Lung
If Turkey provides the sword to Ukraine, it provides the air to Russia. Ankara has meticulously positioned itself as Russia's economic lung—the vital opening that prevents the country from suffocating under the weight of G7 sanctions. This support is systemic:

• Energy interdependence: Turkey has not only continued to purchase Russian hydrocarbons but has actively sought to expand this dependency, positioning itself as a "gas hub" for Russian exports that can no longer legally flow directly to Germany. The construction of the Rosatom-owned Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant cements Russian influence inside Turkish energy infrastructure for decades.

• The Financial Valve: Turkey became the primary destination for the "capital flight" of the Russian middle and upper classes. By refusing to join banking sanctions, Turkish state banks provided a haven for the Russian Mir payment system (until US pressure forced a rollback) and facilitated the transition of Russian oligarchic wealth into Turkish real estate. This refusal to isolate Russia economically is framed by Ankara as humanitarian pragmatism, but in reality, it provides the hard currency essential for the Kremlin’s domestic stability.

78.4 The "Frenemy" Model: Compartmentalizing Conflict
The relationship between Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin represents a new archetype in international relations: the compartmentalized adversity of "frenemies." Both leaders head nations that view themselves not merely as countries, but as unique "civilization-states"—Ottoman and Russian—entitled to spheres of influence that predate modern international law. They share a disdain for Western liberalism and a preference for top-down, man-to-man diplomacy that bypasses institutional bureaucracy. This shared worldview allows them to violently disagree in one theater while cooperating lucratively in another. They have supported opposing sides in proxy wars in Syria, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh, yet maintained robust trade and diplomatic ties throughout. In the context of Ukraine, this compartmentalization allows Erdoğan to authorize the sale of drones that kill Russian soldiers while simultaneously shaking Putin’s hand in Sochi to discuss gas prices. It is a highly volatile, high-maintenance relationship held together only by the fact that both men find the unpredictability of the other preferable to the hectoring moralism of the West.