[alloysteel]

Any alliance between Russia and Turkey shall be uneasy and strained, considering all their history from the fall of Constantinople onward.

The Turks, and especially Erdogan, have as an underlying objective, the reestablishment of the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately, this runs headlong into the idea of Imperial Russia, a dream the Russians have never given up.

Even when the country was under Communist rule. The Russians might not be Communists any more, but they are still Russians.

[Zhang Fei]

[The Russians might not be Communists any more, but they are still Russians.]

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Richard Pipes, the great Russian scholar, pointed out that the problem with the Soviets wasn’t that they were Soviets per se, but that they were Russians - relentless in acquiring new lands to annex to the Russian state. If they had been content to stay within their own vast land holdings, their neighbors would have been a lot less concerned. Russian aggression is why the ex-Warsaw Pact states and many of the ex-Soviet republics immediately tried to secure Western security guarantees, once freed from Moscow’s occupying armies.