What has changed now is not Turkey, which was merely a negligible US proxy (the main support for the Chechens being channeled through Qaeda by the Saudis), but US-Russian relations. The US has decided to let Putin in on the Great Game, and I would really love to know what the terms of the Bush-Putin deal really are. So over to you, Chris.
Hakki
-----------------
What I think is going on in Putin's mind is:
1) Hell, Putin just got to the US to wipe out the Taliban, who just last year were identified as the second greatest threat to Russian security and were funding the Chechens, without a single Russian casualty. And Afghanistan now has a Russia-friendly government with historic ties to Russia. (Dostum I think was in the Afghan KGB, though I may be confusing him with someone else.) Russia can also go hog-wild in Chechnya without much Western comment. It's a little hard to talk about the innocent Chechens while reading NYT reports saying "The Northern Alliance eliminated 30 Chechen fighters in Tora Bora last night."
2) Islamic fundamentalism of the Wahhabbi sort is a serious threat in Central Asia and could easily spread into Russia. Russia now has a buffer protecting it to its south. I also suspect Putin either doesn't believe those bases will be there a long time or that they, or US deals with the stans, will greatly diminish Russian influence.
3) Simultaneously, the West has started butting out of Georgia and Ukraine, which are critical to Russia because of their proximity to the European gas and oil markets are.
4) Jackson-Vannik is getting repealed, Germany will probably be pressured to wave Soviet debt payments (which really are a burden). Getting into the WTO just got a lot easier.
5) Putin may be serious when he says he wants Russia and NATO to be united into a larger security structure. This would make Russia a big military power policing its part of the world (while this would probably be good for Russia, it would really suck for most of East Asia, I might add).
Putin is taking a LOT of domestic flak for his new pro-Western attitude. The military is not happy at all, and the Communists are furious. Bizarrely, Zhirinovsky has become pro-American!
Chris Doss The Russia Journal