After the first Russian air bombs exploded in Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine early on February 24, the world awoke to a new reality. In this new reality, I was unable to return home and, as a foreign policy expert, I decided to continue my work in Turkey, a country I have known and loved for many years.
But in a short time, I realized that I didn't know Turkey as well as I thought I did and that I needed to adjust to the new realities here.
In the first live broadcast, which I watched on one of the main channels, we discussed the Russian army's invasion of Ukraine with Turkish academics.
The Russian army's invasion, in which Russian soldiers brutally rape 10-14-year-old Ukrainian girls, and Russian tanks continue to attack Ukrainian civilians attempting to flee conflict zones by private cars. In the TV studio, I discovered that the true aggressors were not Russia, but the United States and NATO.

NATO, it turned out, "provoked Ukraine," "surrounded Russia," "threatened Russia's security with an aggressive enlargement policy," and attempted to "undermine Turkey by weakening it." During this broadcast, I could not explain what was already obvious:

- Ukraine, as an independent and sovereign state, wants to join the collective security system to defend itself from aggressive Russia through the will of its people, without provoking "hypocritical Western countries."

- This is an inevitable outcome of Russia's expansionist policy in the region.

- NATO continues to reject applications from countries such as Ukraine and Georgia in order not to "provoke" Russia, guided by the principle of enlargement without expanding its borders, allowing Russia to pursue a path of military escalation.

Turkey has also been a member of NATO since 1952, and the alliance has no secret schemes to dismember Russia.

Most likely because I don't speak Turkish fluently enough.

However, this could be because Russian propaganda is extremely active.
It's been two months since the first broadcast I mentioned. Meanwhile, channels, experts, and issues have changed, but one thing has not changed: Turkish analysts have stated the need for cooperation with Russia and America's intentions to stir up the region.
In the continuation of these speeches, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and, of course, Ukraine should be mentioned as classic examples.

This was one of the few instances in Turkey where conservative and liberal, Islamist and Kemalist, nationalist and leftist, ruling and opposition forces demonstrated such harmony.

I began to doubt the veracity of my views. Then I found confirmation of my opinions in recently published social surveys. According to the results, the majority of Turks supported the Ukrainian people, with 34% blaming Russia for the war and 48% blaming the United States / NATO.

Without commenting on previous regional wars (at least in this article), I feel obliged to clarify a few key points about Russia's current attempt to invade Ukraine.

First, Russia's expansionist policy of invading neighboring countries and re-establishing the former Soviet Union did not begin in Ukraine on February 24. It didn't even start in 2014 when Russia invaded and occupied Ukraine's Crimea, followed by the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Turning to the Turkish experts' favorite concept of alternating regional "American-style conflicts," we can see Russia's role in the Transnistrian conflicts in Moldova in 1992, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia in 1991-1993, and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflicts in 1992-1999.
It is also worth recalling Russia's unjust wars in the new century, in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine in 2014. Thus, for several years following the collapse of the Soviet Union due to the Kremlin's "diplomatic efforts," there was no stability in the Black Sea region, where Turkey sought peace and stability, and the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, formed in post-Soviet GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova), also became a de facto "union of victims of Russian aggression."

In a broader sense, countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Syria, and Libya should be added to this list, as they were subjected to "special operations" by the Kremlin at various times.

If we consider Russia's political and military-technical support for the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party- ed.) and other terrorist organizations operating at the highest levels in the region, it becomes clear that NATO does not threaten Russia; rather, Russia threatens NATO countries such as Turkey.

Secondly, if we focus only on Ukraine, we will see that the efforts of the Russian administration to invade Ukraine as an independent state and destroy the Ukrainian people as a separate nation did not begin in 2022 or 2014. Knowing the history of Ukraine, from the decrees of Russian emperors banning the Ukrainian language to the massacres of the Ukrainian intellectual elite shot by the Stalinist regime, the only goal of the Russian administration from past to present is to destroy people who can call themselves Ukrainians.

We see continued efforts to destroy Ukraine's identity, as in the past, such as the mass deportation of Meskhetian Turks, Crimean Tatars, and other ethnic groups with their unique identities, which are an integral part of Ukraine's multicultural liberal society. In 2022, activists, scientists, and human rights activists who openly declare a pro-Ukrainian stance in Russian-occupied Ukrainian cities have been arrested, tortured, and killed.

Civilians taken hostage in Mariupol and the southern regions of Ukraine, where Turkish and Muslim communities predominate, are forcibly transferred to Russia's most remote regions after their passports were confiscated. Missile strikes are destroying granaries, wheat warehouses, poultry farms, and any agricultural infrastructure, as well as defense facilities, to cause famine in Ukraine. This is consistent with government policy...

Finally, let me state that NATO is not to blame for the conflict in Ukraine. To understand this, keep in mind that Ukraine is not yet ready to join NATO, and NATO lacks the political will to accept Ukraine.

This is due to the Ukrainian administration's decision-making, not only in domestic but also in foreign policy, taking place freely and independently of the sovereign state as a legitimately elected government.

NATO and EU membership were included in separate articles in Ukraine's Constitution several years ago. There is, without a doubt, nothing more natural in Turkey than the implementation of the Constitution.

More importantly, NATO. Even if countries like Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia, and Romania want to develop their security cooperation based on the principle of territorial integrity tomorrow, what will we do if Russia continues to resist?

Who will we hold accountable if Russia threatens to invade Ukraine and Turkey? Gas extortion? What if it tries to harm the economy by the imposition of an embargo? What if it forbids its tourists from staying in our countries? Will we re-adopt Russian rules of the game at our own expense in order not to "provoke"? In this situation, what will a country that sees itself as a regional leader do?

Is it appropriate to seek permission from Russia before making a foreign policy decision? I can't respond on behalf of Turkey.
I can respond on behalf of Ukraine.
But, most likely, it is not necessary; you hear this response every day to the sounds of Russian bombs and rockets exploding in Ukraine.

Yevgeniya Gaber