Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with Russian President Vladimir PutinOn Tuesday, August 9, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan travelled to St. Petersburg for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Soviet military forces dominated the Black Sea and were encamped along its borders in the Caucasus and the Balkans. To the south, Syria and Iraq quickly evolved into Soviet client states, complete with Soviet military advisors and the latest armaments. Turkey's traditional, Western-oriented, secularized, military and commercial elites were steadily losing political power to the more socially conservative, traditionally Islamic voters of rural Anatolia. The Erdogan years, rather than being an aberration in Turkey's traditional orientation, may yet prove to be the beginning of an entirely new direction in Turkey's foreign policy.

Source: Huffington Post August 13, 2016 15:33 UTC