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The last decade before 2020, what many in Washington and European capitals justified as “pragmatic restraint” toward Moscow amounted, in practice, to a politics of concession. The result for Türkiye, and NATO in wider perspective, was not simply a more complicated neighborhood. It was the consolidation of Russian power across many fronts, from Syria to Libya, and the Black Sea, precisely where Ankara’s security interests and NATO’s credibility were most exposed.
Far from limiting Moscow, the West’s half-measures enabled it. Russian military bases in Syria, Wagner deployments in Libya, and naval build-ups in the Black Sea all became lasting features of Ankara’s environment. NATO’s deterrence credibility, meanwhile, steadily eroded. Türkiye was left to manage a precarious balance of confrontation and cooperation with Russia, while its allies looked away.
Trump’s reset with Putin looks very similar to the Obama administration’s pursued policy, aiming to improve ties after tensions over Georgia a year after. In practice, Washington scaled back plans for missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, toned down criticism of Russian domestic repression, and sought cooperation on arms control (New START, 2010).
Putin read this not as goodwill but as weakness, reinforcing his view that the West was willing to trade Eastern Europe’s security for limited cooperation. Türkiye, in cooperation with its allies, just restored those areas like Syria and Libya from Russian power, while backing Ukraine heavily, sometimes more than many of Ukraine’s allies. With the renewed reset, now the danger is coming back.
The turning point came in Syria. When Barack Obama’s administration retreated from its “red line” in 2013 over Assad’s use of chemical weapons, it opened the door for Moscow to pose as the indispensable broker. Russia’s direct military intervention in 2015 entrenched Assad and turned him into a client of the Kremlin.
For Türkiye, the consequences were immediate. The war’s prolongation pushed millions of refugees across its borders, straining Turkish society and finances. The problem of refugees haven’t only affected Türkiye, but practically went to be a game-changer in European and EU wider politics.
Even more strategically, the vacuum allowed the PKK’s Syrian affiliate, the YPG, to expand its territorial control with tacit Western backing. Ankara found itself fighting on two fronts: containing refugee flows while resisting the emergence of a terrorist entity on its frontier, with an office to be in consultation in Moscow.
Lacking robust NATO support, Türkiye was forced into the uneasy logic of the Astana process, negotiating ceasefires with Russia and Iran, where none of the Western allies appeared. This meant accepting Moscow both as adversary and partner, a balance that repeatedly broke down, as seen in many crises that the Turkish forces had in Syria. The fact that Türkiye had to strike such bargains underscored the failure of its allies to shield it from Russia’s assertiveness.
Libya was another casualty of Western disengagement. NATO’s 2011 intervention toppled Qaddafi but left the mission undefined and the aftermath unmanaged. The power vacuum fragmented Libya into competing camps, drawing in regional rivals.
Russia, through Wagner, entrenched itself in the country’s east by the mid-2010s. From Ankara’s perspective, this was not a marginal development. It threatened Türkiye’s Mediterranean interests, its commercial stakes, and its broader bid to secure influence in the region.
Had NATO sustained a clearer mission after 2011, Türkiye’s support for Libya’s UN-recognized government might have been backed by collective Western resolve. Instead, Ankara was left to shoulder the contest with Moscow largely on its own, further entrenching the pattern of bilateral bargaining with Russia at NATO’s expense.
By developing channels of communication with all parties in Libya and establishing mechanisms with stakeholders such as Italy, Ankara had the potential to create the first signs of stabilization; now, however, Russia is once again poised to consolidate its influence and might try to make a comeback.
The annexation of Crimea in 2014 struck at the very heart of Türkiye’s maritime security. The Black Sea, governed in part by the Montreux Convention, is central to Ankara’s energy lifelines and naval balance. Russia’s militarization of Crimea transformed the basin into a Russian-dominated theater.
Yet Western responses remained muted: sanctions were narrow and calibrated, designed more to signal displeasure than to alter Russian behavior. For Türkiye, this meant living under the shadow of a Black Sea increasingly shaped by Moscow’s terms. It also meant bearing greater pressure on energy routes, maritime chokepoints, and security calculations, without the reassurance of a decisive NATO strategy.
All of these developments fed into the broader erosion of NATO credibility. To avoid “provoking” Russia, the United States and Europe adopted incremental measures: limited sanctions, small-scale reassurance deployments, and symbolic exercises. But the signal that Ankara received was unmistakable: NATO’s red lines were elastic, and deterrence was conditional.
This weakened Türkiye’s diplomatic hand. On issues from Idlib to Libya, Ankara’s ability to maneuver depended less on NATO solidarity than on its own capacity to strike deals directly with Putin. Paradoxically, this made Türkiye valuable to its allies — precisely because it could engage Russia in ways they could not. But it also deepened the structural asymmetry: Moscow filled the vacuum created by Western caution, while Türkiye absorbed the costs of managing the fallout.
With the U.S. increasingly focused on great-power competition with China, Washington had incentives to deprive Beijing of a reliable partner in Moscow and to reduce America’s direct burden in Europe. Encouraging NATO allies to assume greater responsibility made strategic sense; Europe’s own security would need to be funded and defended in part by Europeans themselves, leaving Washington freer to pivot to the Indo-Pacific. In this context, a measured approach toward Russia could theoretically support broader American objectives: weaken the U.S.-Russia axis that might aid China, while nudging Europe to step up.
Yet here lies the strategic trap. Putin’s pattern of appeasement-proof behavior undermines these very goals. The Kremlin has repeatedly shown that it will not sever ties with Beijing, regardless of Washington’s pressures or incentives. Russia’s incremental gains in Georgia and, later, Ukraine demonstrate a consistent “business as usual” approach: concessions do not moderate Moscow, they embolden it. Each time the West hesitated, Moscow interpreted restraint as opportunity, reinforcing the belief that it could expand influence at minimal cost. For Trump or any U.S. leader, this reality complicates the calculus: allies can be pressured to contribute more, but the Kremlin’s intransigence ensures that American strategic objectives vis-à-vis China cannot be fully realized if Russia continues to exploit Western caution.
In other words, the tension is structural. The U.S. can push Europe to shoulder more responsibility, but it cannot rely on Russian moderation, especially by making NATO seem increasingly irrelevant. Appeasement in the past has demonstrated that Russia rewards patience with territorial and political gains. For Türkiye, this means that every Western misstep reinforces Moscow’s leverage and leaves Ankara to navigate an increasingly constrained strategic space.
It is also true that Ukraine's reconstruction will present Türkiye with significant economic opportunities. However, these opportunities should not cause us to overlook the risks involved.
Defenders of this Western restraint argue that more assertive policies would have risked escalation and overextension. Confronting Russia might have risked direct confrontation.
These concerns were real. But the alternative, allowing Moscow to entrench itself, has proven costlier in the long run. Russia emerged not only as Assad’s protector but as the arbiter of ceasefires in northern Syria, the kingmaker in Libya’s east, and the dominant naval power in the Black Sea. Each concession came to be a new strategic fact on the ground, one that Türkiye in particular had to navigate.
The legacy of the 2010s is that Türkiye was forced into a dangerous duality: Each crisis, from Idlib flare ups to maritime disputes in the Mediterranean, required Ankara to calibrate a balance between deterring Moscow and accommodating it. This helped Türkiye to emerge as a negotiator in the region, diplomatically, economically and on the energy side.
That balancing act is not sustainable in the long run. For NATO, the lesson is that avoiding confrontation in one moment can mean facing a deeper confrontation later. For Türkiye, the lesson is starker.
The decade of concessions left Russia entrenched across Türkiye’s immediate neighborhood. Reversing that dynamic required a horrific war in Eastern Europe. If it repeats, this time it will demand that NATO, for the first time in years, back its southern flank with the kind of resolve that Türkiye has long expected but too rarely received.
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