how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became an ally of Vladimir Putin

He has acted as a mediator on the international scene since the war raged between Russia and Ukraine. Despite the relative confidence placed in him by the West, the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a proven autocrat, has become an essential interlocutor, due to the strategic position of his country and its privileged relations with Moscow. “Who besides him can talk to Putin and Zelensky at the same time?” says a former Turkish MP who testifies in the documentary entitled Erdogan, the sultan’s revengedirected by Romain Besnainou and broadcast Sunday October 22 on France 5.

The film looks back on the past and the political evolution of the Ankara strongman and reveals his dreams of grandeur and his desire to place Turkey at the center of the world. The documentary also explains why Recep Tayyip Erdoğan got closer to Vladimir Putin.

Links with Vladimir Putin

In July 2016, a coup d’état led by a faction of Turkish Armed Forces attempts to overthrow Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The putsch failed and pushed the Turkish leader, who took back the reins of the country with authority, to carry out a huge purge in the administration, the media, private companies, but also at the diplomatic level. Because the international community is hardly moved by the attempt to destabilize the Reis (“captain” in Ottoman Turkish), as his most fervent supporters call him.

“European countries and the United States did not support Erdogan when he almost lost power.”

Hannah Lucinda Smith, Times correspondent in Istanbul

In the documentary “Erdogan, the Sultan’s Revenge”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is convinced that the United States is responsible for this attempted coup. “It should be remembered that Washington was the last country to welcome Erdoğan’s restoration to power“, specifies in the documentary the historian and essayist Jean-François Colosimo. The first head of state to immediately and unreservedly support the Turkish president is Vladimir Putin. From then on, the two men will be more united than ever. “There is a fairly serious thesis, continues Jean-François Colosimo, according to which it was Vladimir Putin who warned Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of the imminence of this coup d’état.”

Purchase of Russian missiles

Shortly after, the Ankara strongman announced that he wanted to buy S-400 anti-aircraft defense missiles from Russia, a way of thanking Vladimir Putin, of ensuring Russian support against the Kurdish rebels along of its border with Syria, but above all to inflict a real snub on the United States and the rest of NATO, of which Turkey has been a member since 1952. “Turkey’s exit from the American missile system to enter the Russian missile system had the effect of a bomb,” reports Samim Akgönül, director of the Turkish studies department at the University of Strasbourg. Despite the threat of sanctions from the United States against Turkey, Erdoğan maintains his order of Russian missiles, thus strengthening his ties with the Kremlin.

“This has caused a lot of concern in NATO, book Hannah Lucinda Smith in the documentary. How can we be sure that he won’t leak military intelligence to Russia? Erdoğan believes he is entitled to anything. He knows that we can no longer do without him.” Nothing seems to stop the dreams of grandeur of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has managed to carve out a place for himself on the world political scene and who aims to restore Turkey to its rank as at the time of the Ottoman Empire.

The documentary Erdogan, the sultan’s revenge, directed by Romain Besnainou, is broadcast on Sunday October 22 at 9 p.m. on France 5, and available on france.tv.