During the recent NATO summit in Europe, Turkish tyrant Recep Tayyip Erdogan went out of his way to the belle of the ball on a number of occasions. Most of them involved cozying up to the NATO leaders and pulling a series of moves that didn’t come as good news to Vladimir Putin and the rest of Erdogan’s friends in Russia. These included dropping his opposition to Sweden joining NATO and feting Ukrainian President Zelensky in Istanbul. After carefully cultivating his relationship with Russia (not to mention Iran) all through the war in Ukraine thus far, why was he doing this? There was obviously a method to his madness. The Daily Beast describes it as Erdogan’s “sneaky master plan.”

After months of carefully navigating a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin during Russia’s war in Ukraine, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to be calling it quits.

In just the last week, Erdogan has dropped his opposition to Sweden joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a move that is sure to anger Putin, and announced his interest in reinvigorating Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union.

He also hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Istanbul and helped return Azovstal Ukrainian fighters captured by Russia to Ukraine, reneging on an agreement between Ankara and Moscow to hold the men until the war was over.

Reading through The Beast’s lengthy analysis, I didn’t find anything particularly sneaky or masterful in what Erdogan was doing. In fact, it seemed pretty blatantly obvious. I reached pretty much the same conclusions while the event was unfolding earlier this week.

Erodgan has been trying (and sadly succeeding) to play both sides of the foreign policy equation against the center for years now. He wanted all of the economic and security benefits that come with being a NATO member while building an alliance with Russia and its allies. This is a rather ironic policy when you consider why NATO was originally formed in the first place.

But now Putin appears to be weakened following the failed Wagner Group uprising and Russia facing increasing economic challenges. Being Putin’s dance partner isn’t being seen as a profitable venture for Turkey anymore, so Erdogan is shopping around. He clearly felt that taking these steps would burnish his image within NATO despite what a dubious and frankly crappy ally he’s been in recent years. And he also hoped to leverage his change of position on Sweden’s NATO application to increase his chances of being admitted to the EU. He even said so openly.

Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be happening, or at least not yet. But I suppose you take what you can get when it comes to Turkey these days. The move does seem to be producing at least some results for Erdogan, at least initially. Canada had previously suspended all talks with Turkey over exports and trade agreements, largely because of Erdogan’s ties to Putin. But after this week’s announcements, they have invited Turkey back to the table.

But this realignment may yet backfire on the rest of the world in a way that may not have been fully considered yet. Throughout the later part of the war, Russia has stuck to an agreement whereby they have allowed Ukrainian grain shipments to head overseas unimpeded. Turkey helped broker that deal with Russia. Now that they’re on the outs, will they continue to honor it? All the Kremlin has had to say thus far is that there are no changes in the policy… yet.