Putin, Erdogan and Musk: The Madmen of the Black Sea

Elon Musk has been a stateless manipulator for tyrants.

© Nations Online Project. Used by permission.

There are three of them—Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation, and Elon Musk—the South Africa-born co-inventor of PayPal and Space X, co-optor of Tesla from its original inventors, and owner of the beleaguered X (formerly Twitter).

The egos of these three autocrats converge over the waters of the Black Sea, which is, as it’s always been, Russia’s only hope of breaking out of landlock and freeing its ships to roam the Mediterranean, from there to sail all the seas of the world.

Of course, Russia once had frontage on the Baltic Sea because it annexed Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia and used their ports. But ice clogs the Baltic annually for seven months, from November to June. In normal winters, the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland, and the Gulf of Riga are iced over, and much of the area’s shipping grinds to a halt. This left Russia onl y the major ports in Lithuania, chief among them Vilnius, through which to trade and operate naval vessels. But when Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia left the USSR in the 1990s after the breakup of the old Soviet Union, they leaned heavily into Europe immediately: all three became members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, and the OECD.

Now Russia had to be content with running naval operations out of Polyarny Inlet on the Barents Sea near Murmansk—which is so far in the bitterly cold north that it’s inside the Arctic Circle, for obviously, NATO wasn’t going to allow Russia a major military presence in the Baltic Sea, and the three former USSR Baltic States weren’t going to risk being annexed by Russia again. All that made Black Sea ports more desirable, and strategically necessary, than ever for Russia—especially Svastopol, the most spectacular deep-water port anywhere in the Black Sea. And this leads us to Crimea, Svastopol’s home.

Russia does have a natural border on the Black Sea—along with Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Georgia—and its River Don flows into the Sea of Azov and then in the Black Sea. But, as you can see from the pink areas on the map, Russia has wanted more—especially Svastopol and Crimea—and it has taken them. In doing so, it has completely surrounded the Sea of Asov. It has also annexed two areas of Georgia, which was once part of the USSR and declared its independence half a year ahead of the Soviet state’s collapse. And since the war in Ukraine began, Russia has annexed the pro-Russian province of Donetsk and gained control lower portion of the Dnieper (Dnipro) River all the way to Kherson.

The Dnieper River provides 80% of Ukraine’s fisheries and the vast majority of its shipping. The Dnieper flows from inside Russian in an almost direct southerly route through Belarus and into Ukraine, passing through Chernobyl. Its waters enter the Black Sea at Kherson, and from Kherson, Putin can choke off the transit of Ukraine’s food and goods, including grain. The Dnieper does freeze from December to March each year, but if Russia, with the help of Belarus, can completely control the Dnieper, it can take Ukraine forever. And maybe it can slip over the border into Moldova and take her, too.

But that’s where the road ends because Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey, which dominate the southern shores of the Black Sea, are members of NATO. Except that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, president of Turkey—which is also a member of NATO and might expected to be on the side of the angels—always plays all sides to his own personal benefit.

Erdoğan, the convicted felon who became president of Turkey, manipulated his way into NATO only to block the entry of Sweden because it won’t fly members of the anti-Erdoğan PPK back to Ankara to be jailed, or, most likely, executed—and Sweden won’t violate its own free speech laws by prohibiting protest burnings of the Quran.

And the reasons Erdoğan’s isn’t being told to get a grip are several, too: He’s a radical Islamist who is trying to create an Islamist state, and pushing him too hard may trigger (some fear) a radical Islamist attack. And he controls the passage of all shipping into and out of the Black Sea. This gives him a power, bestowed by geography alone, enjoyed by its rulers since the times of the ancient Greeks.

Istanbul straddles the Bosporus Strait that connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara. To pass from the Sea of Marmara into the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas, a ship must pass through the long, narrow Dardanelle Strait (or simply, the Dardanelles). Erdoğan controls them both. If Putin wants to hardball Erdoğan, he will face the collective might of all of NATO, of which Turkey is a member. Ukraine is in the position that with passage through the straits, they can’t transport or sell grain, so they can’t tell Erdoğan where to get off, either. What no one seems to doubt is that Erdoğan is after the presidency for life, the destruction of the Turkish democracy created by Kemal Ataturk, and the establishment of an Islamic state. Ahead of this year’s presidential election, Cato Institute Senior Fellow, the Turkish-born Mustafa Akyol, wrote:

[Erdoğan] may eradicate whatever is left of the independent judiciary, free press and critical academia. … He has also promised a whole new constitution, which could realize many of the dreams of the religious right. Suggestions by pro-Erdogan partisans include abolishing the constitutional court, putting even more religion into public education, curbing women’s rights and banning “heretical” (liberal) interpretations of Islam.

Well, Erdoğan won re-election to the presidency—and the man who helped him get it was Elon Musk.