The other Putin on Europe's doorstep: Is Turkey the new Russia?

By weaponizing immigration and launching new foreign adventures, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is increasingly acting like his Russian counterpart. And though such behavior speaks to a deteriorating political situation at home, Europeans can no longer assume that Turkey will remain firmly in the Western fold

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan admires how Vladimir Putin re-established Russia as a regional power in the Middle East and North Africa. File Picture.

Is Turkey the new Russia? That question is increasingly being asked in European capitals as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan adopts a more aggressive foreign policy. In addition to using migration to threaten the European Union, Erdoğan has also been deploying military power to expand Turkey’s sphere of influence across the wider region.

Since the end of the Cold War, Europeans have viewed regional security through a unipolar Western lens. While NATO guaranteed military security, the EU provided legal order. Back in the 1990s, it was widely assumed that the two big non-Western regional players, Russia and Turkey, would gradually be accommodated to this arrangement.