Turkey Trot

If 2014 and 2015 were the years of Ukraine, when endless Russian television coverage and government rhetoric was dedicated to that neighbor’s economy, diplomacy, and elections, 2016 is shaping up to be about another of Russia’s Black Sea neighbors: Turkey.

After the Turkish air force shot down a Russian warplane on the Syrian-Turkish border, Russia’s leadership, followed in lock-step by the well-oiled state media machine, has lashed out at Turkey’s decision and demonized it as a treacherous state sponsor of terrorism.

Inside Russia, Turks were surprised by a wave of deportations, raids and detentions from security services and migration authorities.

Russian citizens, meanwhile, were told they would no longer be able to buy certain Turkish foods – including turkey parts. Twitter was awash with slogans, calling for Russians to abandon Turkish vacation plans, while viral images equated buying Turkish lemons with underwriting Islamic State terrorists.

In St. Petersburg, a cafe changed its name from Antalia (a Turkish coastal region) to Natalia, presumably to spare the business from vandalism. After Putin’s December state of the nation speech mentioned Ukraine exactly zero times, that foe seems to have been, at least temporarily, shoved to the back of some dusty cupboard in Moscow’s Ostankino TV tower. A new enemy is born.

“We have a mixed family and live in Russia, so we didn’t just pick this country by accident, we respect its laws, history and people. If you continue these measures, my child, a Russian citizen, will be left without a father.”

A comment on a Change.org petition (bit.ly/turkwork)
by Russian women married to Turkish citizens in Russia who may have to leave by January 1, 2016, after which, according to a new decree, they can no longer hold jobs with Russian companies.

Simferopol, Crimea has renamed the city’s Turetskaya ulitsa (“Turkish Street”) to something less Turkish, namely, ulitsa Geroya Rossy Olega Peshkova (“Hero of Russia Oleg Peshkov”). The street was called Turetskaya in pre-Soviet times, due to the Turkish baths located there. Oleg Peshkov is the Russian pilot killed when his plane was shot down over the Syrian-Turkish border.

Also in Simferopol, youth activists burned a straw effigy of Turkish President Erdogan during an anti-Turkish rally.

A satirical list of banned Turkish products
(exchanged over social networks):

Turkish coffee

Turkish choir ~ Mikhail Turetsky
(“Turkish”) is a musician and showman
who manages an über-popular male choir

Turkish Gambit (a novel by Boris Akunin)

Turkish Delight

The name Natasha (what Turks supposedly call
all Russian female tourists, no matter their actual name)

How should Russia respond to Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter jet?

(some of the top answers)

economic sanctions: 16%

harsh response, punishment, a lesson: 10%

end all contact with Turkey, close border: 6%

continue doing whatever Putin is doing: 5%

go to war: 4%

talk it out peacefully: 3%

“They came and surrounded the entire factory, letting nobody in or out… Why come with automatic guns, all these toys and masks? We have mostly women working in the factory, it is alarming and hard to understand why they have to conduct this sort of raid… I have nine foreign workers, a drop in the ocean out of our staff of 450. They have all the proper permits. But, after this raid, despite having all their documents, they were taken away. There was a court hearing and now they’ve been accused of something and they will be deported.”

– Svetlana Zimina, economic director at Merinos, a carpet factory with partial Turkish ownership in Rostov and one of Russia’s largest carpet producers. It became one of several companies raided by security services. It has stopped production pending return of its computer servers, which are used to manage operations.