Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin are likely to meet in Kazakhstan in early July. Awaiting confirmation from Moscow.

Turkey confirms possible Erdogan-Putin meeting on July 3-4. Turkish officials say the two leaders will meet during the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Kazakhstan. According to AFP, Hakan Fidan also said Erdogan would “likely” meet Putin in Kazakhstan “in the next few days”, signaling a possible high-level dialogue between the two leaders. The Turkish Foreign Ministry confirmed to AFP that Erdogan could meet Putin in Astana during the July 3-4 summit. If that happens, it will be the first face-to-face meeting since September 2023, when the two leaders met in Sochi, Russia.

However, Fidan visited Russia in early June, attended the BRICS meeting and discussed the topic of the meeting with Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Of course, since last September, Putin’s visit to Turkey had been postponed several times, with the last one on February 12. Adequate explanations were not given for the postponements of the visit, but Ukrainian appears to have been one of the key issues on which Ankara wants to once again play a mediating role.

The Erdogan-Putin meeting – if it takes place – is considered crucial for Turkish-Russian relations, as in the intervening time Ankara has tried to improve its relations with the US. This is not to the liking of the Russian president after the close trade and energy ties he has developed with Turkey. Particularly in the Ukrainian, a Putin-Erdogan meeting would show whether Ankara leans more towards NATO than Moscow.