Who Benefits from Shooting Down a Russian Plane?

Now that the initial reactions to our formal counterterrorism ally shooting down our plane have settled down, we can think about why Turkey did this.

First of all, it is necessary to understand that Turkey is not an Islamic country. Yes, Erdogan periodically uses this beautiful phrase about “minarets our bayonets,” but Istanbul is a secular city where no one covers their faces and alcohol is commercially available. Let’s not even talk about touristy towns. Therefore, this “stab in the back,” as Vladimir Putin called it, was caused purely by calculation, which was not blessed by God at all.

As we know, Bulgaria’s decision regarding the construction of the southern alternative pipeline was an act of betrayal. As a result, it was decided to build it across Turkey. But Washington spoke against it. The U.S. was sensitive about its protégé, Ukraine, being deprived of one of the last trump cards – the fuel transit. Turkey, which for many years has not done anything without the approval of the United States, demanded such conditions and discounts that Russia started thinking about the expedience of this initiative. However, the construction of the pipeline is a project estimated to cost 11 billion euros, but also includes the creation of more than 10,000 new jobs. Considering that the unemployment rate among Turkish youth is 17 percent and the fact that there is a strong leftist opposition in Turkey, one can paint a clear picture of Erdogan’s overthrow accompanied by national patriotic slogans.

The second factor leading to the tragedy is the proximity of the U.S. elections and therefore the traditional war between the two camps. No matter who represents which party, one faction will be for the normalization of relations with Russia, while the other will be for threatening children with it. When you are in a coalition fighting together against people universally considered bad, and distinct from anti-Assad opposition, then staking everything on the card “Russia is almost the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” is difficult and harmful to its reputation. Moreover, while the U.S. had a primary role in the coalition, they were satisfied by everything that was happening. However, after the Paris attacks, France and the rest of Europe started realizing that the way offered by Russia was more adequate and that they should probably follow suit. This scenario means the loss of the initiative for the U.S. and so it is difficult to predict what they should do to reach an agreement with the rest of the world after this.

As a result, a plan was made to squeeze Russia out of the region and make it so Russia would become aggressive again and put itself in opposition to the rest of the “civilized” world. In order to do this, it was necessary to provoke Russia by, for example, shooting down a Russian plane, which like Putin said in “no way threatened the Turkish Republic and indeed was flying and fell in Syrian airspace. What did Turkey and Erdogan himself get for this from the U.S.? Theoretically, a lot of things: perhaps the pressure on the EU to finally take Turkey as one of its members, in spite of the unresolved Cyprus problem; perhaps overlooking the blocking of social networks and other measures that Erdogan has taken to maintain power. Today, no one will raise the question of the inviolability of Syrian-Turkish borders or that there are terrorist camps on Turkish territory. Although Russia can raise this question, nobody will listen, thinking that Russia is just trying to take revenge for its plane.

Also, it’s interesting how our liberals became so active again. Chirikova states that our planes are old, Navalnyy asserts that this is a pointless PR war, and Kozyrev pointed out that Russia has been provoking Turkey for a long time, etc. If Russia retaliates, like what imprudent “patriots” or outspoken provocateurs request on social networks, or if our country just leaves the coalition, then the entire world can call us “the axis of evil” again.

Therefore, the reaction to this Turkish strike should be very balanced – reduction of the level of tourism, suspension of trade, and the minimization of the number of infrastructure projects favorable to Turkey, such as nuclear power plant construction. But by no means should Russia react to this open provocation. Let’s be sensible to the fact that that would be beneficial to political players in the U.S.