The Kremlin desires a decisive win for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the longstanding leader, as it would provide Russia with influence over significant domains, including Ukraine, Syria, and NATO.
When Turks head to the polls on Sunday to decide a historic presidential election, the Kremlin will hope they give long-standing leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a convincing victory, observers say.
The winner will have leverage over critical areas for Moscow, such as Russia’s large-scale military campaign in Ukraine, the war in Syria, and the Kremlin’s standoff with NATO.
For the Kremlin, Erdoğan is a known quantity who has collaborated closely with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the past 20 years, while Kilicdaroglu has recently blamed Moscow for meddling in the vote.
Despite backing opposing players in conflicts in the Middle East and the ex-Soviet Caucasus region, Erdoğan and Putin have developed close ties over years of working together.
Even the Turkish leader hailed his “special relationship” with Putin during a recent interview with US broadcaster CNN.
“Russia and Turkey need each other in every field possible,” Erdoğan said.
“They are incredibly similar to each other regarding their political mentality, their style, and their relation to the outside world,” independent political analyst Arkady Dubnov told AFP.
They both “sincerely despise the West’s liberal values,” he added.
In a world where Moscow and Ankara are both skeptical of Western military, political and economic dominance, Putin and Erdoğan see each other as reliable partners.
But a victory for Western-sympathetic Kilicdaroglu could threaten the established relationship, analysts say.
Yet, Putin and Erdoğan have not always seen eye to eye, and each leader threw his political and military clout behind rival camps when conflicts broke out in Syria, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Miroslava Salazar, with AFP
