The topic is going to ridiculous places. TR has never had any idea of invading Armenia. Nor has any of its policies ever threatened such a military intervention.
On the contrary, before the Khojaly massacres and the closure of the border gate after the Karabakh occupation, economic relations between Turkiye and Armenia were quite normal. Even today, tens of thousands of Armenian nationals work in Turkiye. Historical disputes are a separate issue, TR has never used this as a political tool, fully opened its archives and demanded the establishment of a joint history commission, but it was the Armenians who ran away from the table.
Secondly, Turkiye and Russia have developed a mutually beneficial relationship to the extent that they could never be direct enemies. Of course, there are many areas of geopolitical conflict, but each side has some leverage over the other. At the end of the day, these pragmatic allegiances help them resolve their issues at the negotiating table, and in the broader scheme of things, they serve to align their foreign policy approaches.
Today, the volume of Russian-Turkish economic activity is around $100 billion, but more importantly, especially after the Ukraine war, Russian assets and investments in Turkiye have exceeded tens of billions of dollars and are growing rapidly. I'm not just talking about big companies and sectoral collaborations, but on a more micro scale, for example in real estate sales, Russians have been in the first place for years. Not just tourism, for example, in July 2023 alone the total number of properties sold to Russian citizens was around 800, and today there are hundreds of thousands of Russians living in Turkiye , most of them with permanent residency permits. We live in the same workplaces, we live in the same neighbourhoods. Likewise, the volume of Turkish contractors' work in Russia is measured in billions of dollars. Turkiye also has deep and historic ties with Turkic and Muslim communities, which make up a third of the Russian population. Let me tell you a more interesting fact: A truly significant part of the population of modern Turkiye is made up of Turks and Muslims who fled the Caucasus and Crimean massacres.
A regional struggle or power plays is one thing, but a hostility that could evolve into all-out war is just a fantasy. Even in that case, TR would be one of the last non-nuclear opponents that Russia would want to resort to nuclear weapons. Moreover, you should also think about whether TR is a non-nuclear country anymore or how much of the invisible part of the iceberg it will show you in case of a war.
And as a last point, the relationship between Azerbaijan and Turkiye has acquired a unique character, especially with the Shusha Declaration. According to the resolution adopted by the parliaments of each country, if war is declared against one of these countries, the other country will consider that war has been declared against it. In parallel with this, the coordination between military forces and joint infrastructure works, which have been going on for years, have now reached a certain maturity. This will be followed by a full joint structure in the next decade, especially in the air forces. In short, the two countries have linked their destinies.
