According to recent reports, Russian officials are actively involved in brokering a deal between Turkey and Syrian Kurdish fighters.Brotherhood and friendship In March 1921 the Turkish nationalists and the Russian Bolsheviks signed a treaty of “brotherhood and friendship” in Moscow.In the aftermath of the second world war, Russia’s demands over territory and the status of the internationally significant Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits pushed Turkey towards joining the newly formed Nato.Soviet leader Joseph Stalin famously explained the Russian demands for a military base in the Dardanelles as a question of protecting Russian security and not relying on a weak and “unfriendly” state (Turkey).There was talk of war over the straits, which control passage between the Aegean and the Mediterranean seas, but in the end Russia accepted the status quo."