Erdogan has remained relevant by keeping Russia close and stressing his commitment to NATO, while extracting maximum concessions from each side. His delicate balancing act has given Turkey a unique position of being the only NATO nation whose ear Russia has.
Another interesting development in a series. What few opinions I'd seen seemed to indicate they felt they were too geographically close to Russia to risk pissing them off.
It's right that the alliance with Turkey is too important for Putin to easily play games with, but Turkey's own economy is heavily dependent on Russia as well. For both sides, this was only ever a friendship of convenience. Between the need to shore up a ruble whose value was briefly beaten out by Robux in 2022 and shoring up Putin's ever-failing pride, I'd bank on tensions being strained and nothing more, but they are increasingly strained.
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