Here's Why Erdogan Is Burying the Hatchet With Putin

[Purveyor]

By Leonid Bershidsky

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan are too alike to remain enemies for long. On Monday, the Kremlin's official website published excerpts from Erdogan's letter to Putin in which the Turkish leader apologizes for the downing of a Russian warplane in November and offers compensation to the dead pilot's family.

There may be economic reasons for the unexpected apology, but the two leaders' ideological closeness -- and their interest in doing deals -- probably also helped end the spat.

After the Russian plane flying a mission in Syria briefly crossed the border into Turkey and was downed by the Turkish air force, Putin demanded an apology and an offer to compensate Russia for the damage, but Erdogan insisted that it was Putin who should apologize for the airspace violation. Both sides accused each other of backing terrorists in Syria; at times, the rhetoric appeared too heated for the rift ever to be healed.

To punish Turkey, Moscow shut down package tours to Turkey, forbade Turkish construction firms to build in Russia and banned Turkish fruit, vegetable and poultry. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development estimated last year that the Russian sanctions would cut Turkey's economic growth between 0.3 to 0.7 percentage points in 2016, but Erdogan was undeterred.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-27/here-s-why-erdogan-is-burying-the-hatchet-with-putin

[47of74]

1. They're two peas in a pod.

[840high]

2. I would trust Putin.

[newthinking]

3. He must be getting severe pressure from the resort cities

Turkey has a lot of premium resorts (like are in Mexico) and there were entire cities where Russian families were predominant.

It is not easy for Russian's to travel to the EU and Turkey had a visa free policy so they had a very large amount of Russian Tourism.

[47of74]

4. I was in Turkey in 2012.

My money went quite a ways over there. People were fairly friendly, though I did run into an overly pushy vendor just outside Ephesus. Maybe Edrogan doesn't want to upset that apple cart and watch tourist money - especially Russian tourist money - get spent elsewhere. Maybe ₺₺₺ is more important to him than idealogical purity.