The repeated and similar situations that occur between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin raise many questions about whether they were actually intentional or just a coincidence. Especially after Putin showed up on Tuesday, July 19, 2022, squirming in front of the cameras after Erdogan was 50 seconds late, at their first meeting since the start of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
This scene did not go unnoticed by the Turkish press, as the Turkish presidency circulated it among the media, which, in turn, began to analyze and link the scenes to each other, especially since Putin seemed to be worried in those seconds, as he was standing in front of his seat. and the flags of the two countries, his hands intertwined and his mouth moving before changing position when Erdogan appears and raises his arms at his sides.
The video was also covered by the international press. The Guardian reported: “Putin, who was known for his habit of keeping world leaders waiting, was not familiar with his features yesterday, as some saw that such a stance could be retaliation for a similar previous stance that Erdogan was subjected to in Moscow.” Joyce Karam, a reporter for the English-language Emirati newspaper The National, commented on Twitter: “Those 50 seconds that Erdogan kept Putin waiting and seemed tiring in front of the cameras says a lot about how much has changed since (the event). Ukraine”. Joyce called the change a “tasty breather” for Erdogan after Putin allowed the Turkish leader to wait almost two minutes before meeting him in 2020.
previous positions
The first such scenes that took place between the two leaders were in August 2016. A video has been circulated showing how Putin was waiting for his Turkish counterpart Erdogan for about a minute and a half, when the Turkish president was visiting Moscow at that time.
But the second position between the two leaders that caused a furor was in 2020, the Rossiya 1 TV channel published a video of the Turkish president waiting for Putin for two minutes, before the doors of the meeting room were opened and the Turkish president and his accompanying delegation entered. The scene made a splash and prompted Turkey to attack the Russian media, describing what he did as “disrespect on his part and it is not right to address the issue in this way,” adding, according to her foreign minister, “The Russian media are practicing black propaganda against Turkey in any simple dispute. And they back off when the relationship improves. It cannot be argued that these positions between the two leaders are revenge on each other or a response to previous positions that took place between them, but the repetition of these positions with two leaders the size of Erdogan and Putin attracts a lot of media attention and takes on analytical dimensions that are reflected in the nature of relations between the two countries and the proximity of positions between them.
This method of address, which Putin became famous for during meetings with heads of state, and some see in it as a calculated psychological policy of the Russian president, he began to use in the early days of his presidency, when he arrived 14 minutes late. for the Queen of Great Britain in 2003. Putin also delayed his meeting with Pope Francis A by an hour when he visited him at the Vatican in June 2015. a summit is planned in Helsinki, which brought him together with the Russian president. According to Radio Free Europe, Angela Merkel had to wait 4 hours and 15 minutes to meet Putin in 2014, while Viktor Yanukovych, then President of Ukraine, waited 4 hours before sitting down with the Russian leader.
