The country with the second largest military in NATO, and one which has in recent years had a strained love-hate relationship with Russia (but also the US), particularly over Syria, is now wagging its finger at Moscow, telling it to drop its demands which have brought it into severe tensions with the West over Ukraine.
Turkey this week urged for Russia to drop its "one-sided" demands in its engagement with NATO, strongly suggesting that its current requests for no "guarantees" of more eastward expansion of the Western military bloc are too "maximalist". This after Turkey has been caught quietly expanding its military assistance to Kiev via drone and military equipment sales.
"For any proposal to be accepted, it should be acceptable by both sides. Russia made some proposals. But maybe NATO seeks the same kind of guarantees from Russia. This is not a one-sided issue," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu recently told reporters.
"If the requests are maximalist — I’m not saying that Russia is maximalist in any case — both sides must be constructive," he said, with the suggestion clearly being in Anakara's eyes Moscow is indeed pressing for too much. "They should come to the table with proposals that both sides can accept."
"If Russia has any certain specific expectation or issue from Turkey regarding reducing tensions between Russia and NATO, Turkey will evaluate this positively because our objective is clear," said Cavusoglu added. "Everyone would be affected, God forbid, by conflict in the region."
But Russia's position is that the West merely abide by promises made soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union;...