As President Dmitry Medvedev departed for a state visit to Turkey this week, there wasn’t much debate over whether or not it would be success, but rather what kind of deals would be offered up to get the handshakes – would it be weapons, cheap gas, a pipeline, a Gazprom investment, or the granddaddy of them all, nuclear energy?

Well Turkey is no old maid (sorry, Ukraine), and has many good reasons to call for a high dowry:  NATO membership, the largest standing army in Europe, and a booming, modern economy which is closely narrowing the gap with Europe.  Most importantly, the country occupies an incredibly important geostrategic position between Europe and the energy basin of Central Asia as well as control over the Bosporus Strait, and will continue to play a key role in the transit of oil and gas.

So it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise that during Medvedev’s visit Russia signed a $20 billion deal to built Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, and another 20 deals and agreements. In this particular situation, Sergei Kiriyenko and Rosatom played the role usually left to Igor Sechin, and carried out the now familiar process of layered bargaining (very few countries in the world can come to one meeting with arms deals, nuclear energy, and 5 or 6 industrial oligarchs in tote to jump in on the deal).  

But as usual, behind the deals, some problems in the relationship remain.