2 Nations Split by Similarities of Their Heads

Moscow: Russia has a new Enemy No. 1.

His name is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, or as the TV news program hosted by the Kremlin's main ideologue described him Sunday night, "an unrestrained and deceitful man hooked on cheap oil from the barbaric caliphate" - referring to the Islamic State.

Not long ago, Erdogan earned about the warmest accolade possible from President Vladimir Putin. He described the Turkish president as "a strong man," willing to stand up to the West. That was then.

Ever since the Turkish air force shot down a Russian warplane last week that Turkey accused of violating its airspace, Putin has been calling Erdogan a back stabber. Erdogan has not taken on Putin directly, but he has refused to apologize for the downing of the Russian fighter jet even as he has softened his tone. And a pro-government Turkish newspaper recently ran a headline saying, "Putin tries to deceive the world with his lies," a reference to Moscow's actions in the war in Syria.

The animosity between Russia and Turkey has been growing for years because they back different sides in Syria's civil war, with Russia intervening to buttress the government of President Bashar Assad, an Alawi Shiite, and Turkey backing the Sunni majority and pushing for Assad to leave.

But in the wake of the airplane's downing, analysts say the two men's personal styles - including an unwillingness to compromise - is further inflaming the tensions.

Those differences now threaten to at least prolong the bloody, intractable conflict in Syria, and have raised fears that NATO could be dragged in if the conflict between Russia and Turkey escalates.

"The problem is that you have two presidents who are both highly status conscious and both high-risk players," said Ivan Krastev, a political scientist who is chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria. "Not looking weak is something very important for both Putin and Erdogan. Neither knows how to retreat, nor apologize. In that way they are like twins."

Both men are often described as combative, uncompromising, authoritarian and nationalistic. Both are trying to restore luster to the empires on Europe's periphery that were lost in World War I - the Ottoman Empire and Czarist Russia. One is sometimes derisively likened to a czar, and the other a sultan. Both nurse a sense of historical grievance that the West does not fully accept them.

The two leaders profess to respect the rule of law but are widely criticized for ignoring it when it threatens their reach. They have unleashed the courts or the tax authorities to silence opposition media and criticism from big business.

Both advocate conservative, family values and a focus on traditional religion as setting their countries apart from the West. Both are willing to make economic problems take a back seat to political goals. Both tend to blame external, global conspiracies for failures.

Or as Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny wrote on his blog last week: "They both talk foreign policy nonsense to distract citizens from internal problems. Both use imperial ambitions, imperial rhetoric to strengthen their personal power and personal enrichment. Both hate social and news media. Both call the West their enemy and appeal to traditional values, while they both are immoral."

They also enjoy soaring popularity ratings at home, which gives them a sense of impunity. The two men are such mirror images of each other, in fact, analysts said, that they are unlikely to be able to resolve the dispute over the plane without outside mediation.

"They share many types of things, but they do not trust each other," Krastev said. "There is too much ambition on both sides."

Putin has demanded a public apology for the shooting down of the military jet and compensation from the Turkish leadership. The extent of Putin's pique is perhaps best reflected by the repeated accusations on Russian state television that Erdogan's son is deeply involved in the black market trade in oil extracted by the Islamic State, the terrorist group that has taken over parts of Iraq and Syria - and whose Egyptian affiliate recently took credit for downing a Russian passenger jet.

Erdogan strongly denied the allegations. "They are lies; they are slander. We have never, never had this kind of commercial relationship with any terror organization," Erdogan said in an interview with France 24 last week. "They have to prove it, and if they can, Tayyip Erdogan will leave office."

Still, Erdogan did seem to be trying to dial back after first demanding that Russia apologize over what it said was a violation of its airspace, and direct military confrontation seems unlikely. By the weekend he said, "We are truly saddened by this incident."

"In his own way he is trying to apologize, but I don't think Putin is receptive," said Asli Aydintasbas, a Turkish fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Or as Dmitry Kiselyev, the Kremlin ideologue, said pointedly Sunday night, "The hotline has been switched off." In the hourlong news program, which was devoted almost entirely to bashing Turkey, he added, "Has Erdogan lost his marbles?"

It was not always thus. A year ago the two leaders seemed born allies as they agreed that Russia would invest in a major gas pipeline, known as the Turkish Stream, that would pump Russian gas through Turkey to Europe as an alternative to the one across the Balkans that the European Union had opposed. Indeed, the two leaders pledged to more than triple their roughly $30 billion annual trade to $100 billion by 2020.

The fact that Erdogan openly boasted about the project at a time when the West was calling for wider sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis prompted Putin to call him a "strong man."

Right after the Sukhoi 24 was shot down, Turkish trucks began to back up at the Russian border, as the government food watchdog suddenly discovered problems with the produce that it had praised a year ago as exceptional. Russia barred charter flights to Turkey as well as vacation packages, and suspended visa-free entry for Turks as well as some labor contracts.

It is not clear whether the Turkish Stream and other major projects will be affected. Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister and respected economist, has warned that segments of the Russian economy depend on parts supplied by Turkey.

In the end, some analysts say, a confrontation with Turkey, hot or cold, could speed Putin's goal of lifting Western sanctions imposed after his country's seizing of Crimea in Ukraine. Replacing Moscow's heated anti-Western criticism with a new target might improve Russia's estranged ties with the West.

"If you are the military chieftain and there is no way to switch back to electoral legitimacy, you need enemies," said Nicolai Petrov, a political scientist at the Higher School of Economics. "Turkey is the best candidate."