'Anla?t?k m??' Nyet! 'Güzel!'

When, in the late 1950s, Kemal Nejat Kavur was serving as the Turkish ambassador to Moscow, Andrei Gromyko, the then Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs asked him: "Your Excellency, your country has the most number of men under arms in Europe. If it's against your traditional enemies, the Greeks, it is too big. If, on the other hand, it is against us, it's too small. So, what's the reason for it?" Little seems to have changed since then.

Turkey's military rules of engagement over its long border with Syria have eventually had to dictate a "hug with the bear." Let's hope the hug will not leave behind deep scars. At least the Turkish military - which on Nov. 24 became the first NATO armed force to shoot down a Russian or Soviet fighter jet since the 1950s - happens to be more precise than Turkey's nationalists, who last week protested Russian air strikes in Syria in front of the Dutch Consulate. If it had not been, it might have shot down a French fighter by accident.

Judging from what has in recent years come into the public domain, one might suspect that Turkish and Russian state dignitaries speak their own language when they meet to discuss strategic affairs - and without interpreters. Russia - militarily, and heavily - intervened in Syria in a way that would not make the Turks happy exactly 38 months after an Anadolu Agency headline in July 2012 read: "Erdo?an: We have consensus with Russia over Syria." The story quoted the then prime minister as saying: "Russia is positive about a transition government without [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad."

In December 2014, President Erdo?an said: "Generally speaking we have a consensus [with Russia] for a solution [in Syria]." In July 2015, on his way back from Indonesia, Erdo?an said: "Russia's...