February 14, 2007 - 13:30 AMT
Turkey and Russia exercise geostrategic armistice but not multilateral cooperation
During the recent years the USA-Turkey strategic relations that used to determine Turkey's foreign policy for decades were subjected to severe erosion and lost their real meaning, Dr Ruben Safrastyan, the Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the RA Academy of Sciences, told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter. In his words, this can be proved by serious discord between the United States and Turkey. "Furthermore, with Erdogan's islamistic Justice and Development party coming to power, Turkey's foreign policy is remarkable for the aspiration to normalize relations with the neighbor Islam states. However, it's not to Washington's liking," Safrastyan said.

According to him, the process of political reconciliation between Turkey and Russia is not smooth, as the principal geopolitical disagreements have not been settled yet. "The official Russian-Turkish documents contain the term "multilateral cooperation" instead of "cooperation" in order to underscore a higher level of relations between the two states. I prefer the term 'geostrategic armistice' that implies the factor of rapprochement of Turkey and Russia with geopolitical discrepancies maintained. Anyway, we can conclude that Turkey's foreign policy tends to independence," Safrastyan said.