With ties with West strained, Turkey gets lifeline from Poland
Drawing on his rapport with the Polish president and a landmark drone deal with Warsaw, Erdogan seems to be aiming at two goals — strengthening his hand in NATO and having a close ally within the European Union.
For those familiar with why Istanbul happens to have a “Polish village,” Polish President Andrzej Duda’s visit to the picturesque neighborhood this week was loaded with symbolism evoking the historical legacy that connects Turkey and Poland.
The “Polish village” — or Polonezkoy in Turkish — was founded in 1842 by Polish exiles who took refuge with the Ottomans in the hope of organizing Poland’s independence struggle after its invasion by Russia, Austria and Prussia. Their leader, Michal Czajkowski, who became known as Mehmet Sadik Pasha after converting to Islam, led an 8,000-strong regiment in the Ottoman army, which, in coalition with the British and the French, defeated Russia in the 1853-56 Crimean War.
Nearly 170 years on, the issue of Crimea is uniting Turks and Poles again. Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine was high on the agenda of Duda’s talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on May 24, along with other topics concerning Russia such as security in the Black Sea and the conflict between Kiev and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Duda emphasized that Crimea was under occupation, echoing Erdogan’s repeated rejections of Russia’s annexation.
