Putin humiliated Erdogan and his entire entourage by making them wait outside the door until he couldn’t stand anymore. Where he sat is where butlers sit and wait for the next order from the boss. When inside, they stood under the statue of Catherine II.
,In Turkish, there is a saying which can roughly translate as “How you will end up on Thursday looks clear enough on Wednesday.”
When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his entourage of senior officials headed to Moscow on March 5, their expectation was to achieve a quick cease-fire in Syria’s rebel bastion of Idlib. They had expressed this desire the previous day. Many Turkey experts and pundits predicted that Erdogan’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin would produce a temporary deal that could be face-saving for Erdogan without Syria having the military gains achieved on the Idlib battlefield reversed in favor of Turkey and its Syrian proxies.
Indeed, this is what happened in Moscow.
By agreeing to rush to Moscow instead of hosting Putin in Istanbul, and after making persistent requests for a meeting with Putin, Erdogan showed a weak hand. On his way to Moscow, he demonstrated that he needed Putin more than the Russian president needed him.
