So, it happened. Brexit is upon us. The politics of fear won the day – the Turks are no longer coming. As we come to terms with the idea that the long EU divorce process is about to get going, Turkey – the country whose people Britons are apparently petrified of – is still plodding on with the longest engagement in history.

Despite all the bile spewed about the country during the leave campaign, it turns out Britain and Turkey are not so different after all. Like Britain, Turkey blames the EU for many of its ills. The slow speed with which its accession into the union has progressed is often seen as a deliberate move by the British, the US and the EU itself to undermine Turkish power.

The EU is frequently referred to as a Christian expansion project, a union that exists to assert Christian ideals and dominance over the world. “Europe, you don’t want us because the majority of our population are Muslim,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said at a graduation ceremony in Istanbul on the eve of the Brexit vote. He also suggested holding a referendum on the country leaving the EU before it has even joined – Trexit, of course. “We can stand up and ask the people just like the British are doing,” Erdoğan said.

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Also like Britain, Turkey sees itself as a country whose ideals are constantly under threat from outside forces. It would be a world superpower, if it weren’t for those pesky Americans, Russians, Europeans … everyone. The idea that British secret service plots work to constrain Turkey is common. “It might sometimes look like it is Russia or the US that is behind things. But they are all controlled by the British secret state,” the televangelist Adnan Oktar, also known as Harun Yahya, – once tweeted. To which the British ambassador to Turkey, Richard Moore, amusingly responded: “So now you know…”

Richard Moore (@UKAmbRichard) .@harun_yahya So now you know...

Yet, despite all this, Turkey’s EU talks have been championed by Britain. Jack Straw led the negotiations in 2005 when Turkey’s membership talks were officially given the go-ahead. He even hugged the then foreign minister, Abdullah Gül, in celebration, and was later awarded the Order of the Republic – the highest honour a foreign national can receive. Many British politicians have championed Turkey’s bid. David Cameron said in 2012 it was unfair that Turkey was being asked to “guard the camp, but not allowed to sit in the tent”. It’s no wonder then that Turkey felt betrayed at being used as an excuse for Brexit.

It was Cameron saying that Turkey will join the bloc “in about the year 3000” that really stung – pro-government journalists scrambled to write things along the lines of “see, told you, everyone hates us”. Speaking on BBC television’s Newsnight programme via video link on Tuesday, Erdoğan’s chief adviser, İlnur Çevik, said: “The French said we don’t want you. Many countries said this. But the way Mr Cameron put it, we feel really, really taken in … That kind of attitude really is deeply hurting the Turks.”

“Why should we be flooding Britain,” he asked, on the much touted – but largely mythical – imminent invasion of Turkish migrants to the UK. “We’re not going to go there just because you produce Cadbury’s chocolates and Maltesers, for God’s sake.”

Britain and Turkey are two fringe nations on opposite sides of Europe – in more ways than one

Turkey didn’t want Britain to leave, but its exit may well dent Ankara’s EU ambitions enough for it to give up all together. “The fragmentation process of the EU has started. Britain was the first to abandon ship,” Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli said on Twitter.

This all plays right into the hands Erdoğan, who seems to have gone off the EU and instead dreams of building a neo-Ottoman style Muslim union with him at its helm. “The people in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria are saying, ‘Forget about the EU, what could be the new scenario with Turkey,’” another of his advisers, Yiğit Bulut, said this month. “Maybe the governments cannot speak about it because of the German government’s oppression, but people … have started to talk about how they will be ruled from Istanbul.”

Ironically for all those who wanted to keep Britain as far apart from Turkey as possible, Brexit could improve relations between the two countries. Britain and Turkey as two fringe nations on opposite sides of Europe – in more ways than one – are united by a growing romantic nationalism. Perhaps Turkey could even pick up some of the trade slack when the UK does eventually pull out – investment and exports between the two countries are already high.

If nothing else, Brexit may at least temper claims of the EU being an elitist Christian club. Turkish nationalists understand arguments of sovereignty and have backed the campaign. But with nationalists also threatening the freedoms of Turks who don’t fit their plan – LGBT people and Radiohead fans, to name but a few – is that really a side Great Britain wants to be on?