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Turkey has intensified its cooperation with Ukraine while the struggle between Russia and Ukraine intensifies. Turkey and Ukraine are supposedly to create a drone facility in Kiev to maintain, repair and modernize the fighting drones. Moreover, Turkey and Ukraine have agreed to cooperate on developing air fighter jet which is viral for Turkey’s national air fighter programme. Although Russia controls the Crimea, majority of the countries do not recognize this. Thus, adds economic and political problems to Russia. There are round 2,5 million Russians who are mostly brought from their places, are living in Crimea. In order to support them, Russia needs to implement big projects, create jobs and establish business relations via Crimea. However, Russian economy is not in a good shape to create such development, the future of Crimea becomes a concern to Turkey due to security reasons.

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Crimea has been a vital peninsula to Turks. When Ottoman family was powerful, the Crimean Khanate was considered to be successors Ottoman dynasty in the protocol. There was a time when the Ottoman Sultan Murad IV. decided to pass the dynasty to Khanate since he had no heir and did not want to pass it to his brother Sultan Ibrahim (known as Mad Ibrahim) due to his phycological problems.
 
After annexation of Russia, Crimea once again becomes a top security concern to Turkey. Many might consider that Turkey and Russia have a good relations but they do not. S-400 surface to air defense system has disturbed the US-Turkish relations. Akkuyu nuclear project by Russia or the Russian-Turkish natural gas project via Blacksea might ben seen as developments strengthening the Russo-Turkish relations. However, Turkey and Russia are on the opposite site of the table when it comes to Russian existence in Syria, Russian support to Hafter in Libya or Russian policy in Iraq. Therefore, Turkey assists Ukraine to strengthen its military capacity since it knows that annexation of Odessa in future might be a great tragedy for Turkey as well. If Russia occupies Odessa, it would amount to a return to 18th century when Ottoman Empire lost its key parts of foothold in the region. Moreover, that loss opened a path to Russian expansion in Balkans and Caucasus.
 
Therefore Turkey cannot let history to repeat itself. In order to stop that Turkey will amount its military assistance to Ukraine. That would keep Russia concerned and cautious for any offensive attack to Ukraine. Russian as well as Turkish weak points are their own economy. Russia has lost its window to modify its economy. Russia will depend on oil and gas turnover but the energy prices are expected to reduce in coming decade since electricity will replace the oil and gas. That would cost Russia a lot when the times comes since economy will not be strong enough to support military advancement as well as social support programme.
 
However, Turkey has still room to maneuver. However, President Erdogan economic choices which are mostly driven by religious ideology cause great damage to Turkish economy. However, Turkish economy is much more diversified than Russian economy and any economic crisis which no way to escape can be reverted in one to three years. Turkey will stagger in short term but Russia will be trapped in longer term. This might put pressure on Russia to do something unpresented in the region i.e. to assault an offensive attack to Odessa in order to handle the social unrest in Russia as well as strengthening the economy.
Therefore, Crimea is a critical to Turkey’s security and will remain top agenda as long as Crimea is under the control of Russia.