One of the regional actors most affected by the war in Ukraine, Turkey is hosting on Thursday (10) the highest-level meeting between representatives of Moscow and Kiev since Vladimir Putin’s missiles began to fall on its neighbor on February 24.
In Antalya, foreign ministers Sergei Lavrov (Russia) and Dmitro Kuleba (Ukraine) should meet. Not much to expect, given that both sides have been talking to delegations in Belarus since last week and the Kremlin has already made its list of demands to end the war, seen in Kiev as an ultimatum of surrender.
For Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, however, much is at stake. And at a terrible time: his government is facing a serious economic crisis, with unorthodox measures aimed at stopping the melting of the Turkish lira, all with an eye on next year’s presidential election.
The Turkish president is in a unique position as a member of NATO (the military alliance of the West), a supporter of Ukraine and a close partner of Russia in various business and strategic partnerships.
It is in his relationship with Kiev that the Turkish autocrat is most comfortable, not least because of his dominant economic position. He established an important military liaison, with Ukrainians supplying the engines for the new Turkish attack helicopters, and delivering the valuable Bayraktar-TB2 drones, which give Russian armor so much headache now.
At the same time, the historic rivalry with Russia, with whom it has disputed the Black Sea basin since the time when the Russian Empire rose and challenged the Ottoman in the 17th century, leading to numerous wars, has moments of proximity.
Both countries supported different sides in the Syrian and Libyan civil wars, but in the end established cooperation to call the shots. At the beginning of the Russian intervention in the Syrian conflict, one of its fighter jets was shot down after accidentally invading Turkish airspace, but then the situation returned to normal.
Ankara supported Azerbaijan’s 2020 war against Armenia, Moscow’s somewhat reticent ally. In the end, Putin managed to preserve his strategic footing by keeping peacekeepers around the still-disputed areas of Nagorno-Karabakh, but Turkey’s geopolitical weight grew too much in the region.
When Ankara was shaken by Washington over Donald Trump’s refusal to extradite the Muslim cleric whom Erdogan blamed for his 2016 coup attempt, he went to the Russian arms bazaar to buy the powerful S-400 anti-aircraft system.
The move so displeased the US that the Turks were expelled from the international program to build the fifth-generation F-35 fighter jet. They shrugged it off and can buy even more Russian weapons — that is, they could, given the global and NATO animosity toward Putin now.
Turkey’s relationship with the West is complex. The European Union has always snubbed his requests to join the bloc, due to resistance from those who saw the measure as a gateway to rampant immigration and, worse for politicians with an eye on the conservative electorate, from a Muslim country.
With NATO, there has always been cyclothymia. On the one hand, Turkey’s Incirlik base is the springboard for action across the Middle East and guards US nuclear warheads, and Ankara controls the outlet of the Black Sea to the Mediterranean — that is, Russia’s access to so-called warm waters.
On the other, there are the divergent interests with its historic rival Greece in the Mediterranean, around the divided island of Cyprus. Invaded by the Turks in 1974, the north of the territory remains separate from the south, which gave Ankara a three-year arms embargo from the NATO leader.
In recent years, Turkish drillships have been exploring potential oil and gas fields in the area, and Athens has found itself compelled to strike a military deal with Paris, including the purchase of advanced Rafale fighter jets. And the three countries are NATO.
Thus, Erdogan is under pressure to heel towards NATO and Ukraine in the confrontation, not least because he condemned the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and shelters politicians from the Tatar Islamic minority of the peninsula, who see in Putin a mirror of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. , which drove them out of there for decades.
So far, it hasn’t gone far. It kept its airspace open to Russian planes, unlike the rest of Europe, and only restricted the passage of warships through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, allowing the return of Russian vessels from the Black Sea Fleet.
Ukraine wanted the area to be completely closed, but Erdogan was supported by the 1936 Montreux Convention, which gives him control and establishes rules for the use of the roads in times of peace and war.
Now, the Turkish leader will have the opportunity to try to mediate in the ongoing conflict, something Putin and NATO despised in the weeks leading up to the first shots. If successful, he can continue with his tightrope walk; if not, the pressure to join NATO’s warmongering line will increase.
In terms of long-term interests, the ideal world for Erdogan is that Russia does not emerge empowered with total military submission from Ukraine, although this could make its strategic position revalued in the West.
