Turkey

Less than a year back in the month of November 2015 the world witnessed an event which was going to be a face changer for it. It was on 24^th November 2015 that Turkey’s F-16 combat aircraft shot down a Russian SU-24 fighter jet near the Russia-Turkey border. This even resulted in the bilateral relations of Turkey and Russia going through a complete 180-degree change in a snap.

Historically Turkey and Russia have had many ups and downs in their bilateral relationship. When Turkey joined NATO in the year 1952 and got aligned with the West, its relations with the then Soviet Union had got strained. Almost 4 decades later, following the dissolution of Soviet Union in 1991 the relations between Turkey and Russia improved quickly eventually leading to greater mutual trade. Although Turkey was always known to be a NATO and US ally, in the year 2009 the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Russia, met Russian President Vladimir Putin and signed many trade deals defining a new phase of bilateral relations.