Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has presented himself as the only one capable of acting as a mediator between the two warring countries – reflecting the country’s attempt to obtain more diplomatic weight in non-Western countries. uppercase letters.
Erdogan’s peace efforts saw Ankara host two Russian-Ukrainian meetings in March. He first hosted foreign ministers on March 10 and then delegations from the two countries on March 29 before the images of the Bucha massacre made it even more difficult to find a compromise.
A month later, Erdogan further bolstered his diplomatic credentials by coordinating a prisoner swap between the United States and Russia.
Since then, Turkish officials have met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a visit to Kyiv. Erdogan then expressed his willingness to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to seek an agreement.
Erdogan’s attempt to present himself as a major diplomatic player and a peacemaker in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is partly explained by the deep economic ties between Ankara and Moscow and by the failure of the Turkey’s EU membership application.
The ties that unite
According to a January survey by Metropoll, Turkish citizens seemed to be torn between whether their country’s foreign policy should focus on the West or the East. Just under 39.5% of respondents opted for closer ties with Russia and China and 37.5% preferred the EU and the United States.
So Erdogan toed the line, condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while sending stings at NATO, arguing for example that “the outbreak of the conflict is due to years of expansionism that have not respected the agreements after the fall of the Berlin wall”.
As for relations with kyiv, a large community of ethnic Tatars of Turkish origin – particularly in the Crimea – binds the two countries. This explains why a member of the Azov Battalion, identifying as Muslim and of Tatar origin, directly called on the Turkish president to evacuate the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol on May 5.
“We are constantly bombarded from the sky, sea and ground. Please carry out the procedures to evacuate people, including military personnel, from the territory of Azovstal. End this nightmare”, a- he then declared.
There are also economic and military ties between Ankara and Kyiv. Turkey was the largest foreign investor in Ukraine in 2020 and relations have grown even stronger in 2021, both in the commercial and military sectors.
As part of an agreement between the two countries, ratified by the Ukrainian parliament, Ankara has pledged to provide $18.5 million to kyiv to help meet its military needs. The deal also saw Turkey commit to providing “security and peace guarantees” in the strategic Black Sea region.
“The two countries can be called friends,” Léo Péria-Peigné, a researcher at the IFRI think tank, told Euronews. “Between 2019 and the outbreak of the war, Zelenskyy and Erdoğan saw each other at least six times.”
NATO: Do you like to hate yourself?
Moreover, despite being members of NATO, Turkish officials have sometimes taken provocative positions on the transatlantic alliance or even committed acts of outright defiance.
The decision to buy the Russian-made S-400 missile system saw Ankara kicked out of the F-35 development program in 2017. It also led to US sanctions against the defense sector based on the law Countering America Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (Caatsa). of 2017, which penalizes countries that buy defense weapons from Russia.
Yet in September 2021, Erdoğan expressed his willingness to purchase a second tranche of S-400 missiles.
“For Russia, this was a key decision to further bind a NATO member which plays a key role in the Middle East,” Marc Pierini, former EU ambassador to Turkey and researcher at Carnegie Europe in Brussels.
Ankara began talks with Moscow just three weeks after the failed 2016 coup, in which Erdoğan even suspected NATO involvement. It is probably also for this reason, according to Pierini, that he decided to turn to Moscow.
“Turkey has become a prisoner of economic ties with Russia, with which at the same time, belonging to NATO, it does not share geopolitical ambitions. This is a very particular situation”, underlined Selim Kuneralp, former ambassador of Turkey to the EU.
“Even if we must always keep in mind that Russia, victorious or not, will still need Turkey, through which the gas pipelines pass to Europe, and where it exports a lot and builds a nuclear power plant”, has he also reported to Euronews.
Economic relations with Russia have been structured over the years according to what experts call an “asymmetric interdependence”, that is to say unbalanced and in favor of the Kremlin.
Russia supplies a third of Turkey’s gas imports while state-owned Rosatom is developing Turkey’s first nuclear power plant which is expected to produce around 10% of the country’s electricity from 2025. Russia is also the third Turkey’s trading partner.
Black Sea, Strait and Montreaux Convention
Another link between the two countries is their geographical location and, above all, the importance that the Black Sea region plays for both.
The Black Sea and the straits that cross it have been, for various reasons, at the center of Erdoğan’s strategic decisions in recent years. All the more so during the Russian invasion, perceived by the Turkish leader as a threat to economic stability and at the same time as an opportunity to strengthen his geopolitical prestige.
Turkey is granted control of the area by the Montreaux Convention, signed in 1936 by Turkey, France, Greece, Romania, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. Its purpose is to regulate the passage of commercial and war vessels through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits. The convention stipulates that during a conflict, Turkey can prohibit the passage through the strait of military ships of belligerent countries.
“At first Erdogan stalled, when he realized the seriousness of the conflict, he decided to close the strait,” Pierini explained. “It is a decision which, on the other hand, benefits both NATO and Russia, the latter being more penalized as an invading country which, especially in the first part of the conflict, needed more supplies “.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Russian Ambassador to Turkey welcomed the application of Article 19 of the Montreaux Convention.
In the event of a prolongation of the conflict, Ankara could in any case take advantage of the possible isolation of Russia – the first naval power in the Black Sea – to maintain relations with other trading partners and impose itself in the area.
“The area is very important because it is a source of energy discovered relatively recently,” says Péria-Peigné. “For more than a year, the Turkish president has been trying to diversify energy supply sources, sometimes even clashing with the European Union, particularly Greece.”
It is no coincidence that the area in which Russian military operations are concentrated, not only in the current invasion but also in the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, is the one overlooking the Black Sea: in other words, an energy resource and a fundamental bulwark against NATO expansionism, which Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined in 2004.
However, Turkey has always disapproved of NATO’s military presence in the Black Sea, for example refusing to participate in the creation of a limited maritime coordination proposed by Romania.
Turkey wants peace
At the same time, Ankara is worried about Russian expansionism in the region. So, to what extent will Turkey be able to play the role of mediator, and not openly on the side of NATO?
“Erdoğan has not yet drawn a red line beyond which he would not tolerate the Russian initiative,” Kuneralp said.
“Honestly, I don’t see the scope of mediation now, but peace is certainly in Ankara’s interest because it has very strong economic and diplomatic ties with Moscow,” he added.
The energy sector is not the only one to benefit from the good relations between the two countries, added Kuneralp. The construction sector also has close ties with Russia.
“Unlike European countries and the United States, Turkey has many companies that have obtained licenses to build in Russia. Companies that inevitably suffer from sanctions imposed by other Western countries,” he said.
These are not pushing Ankara too hard to join the increasingly heavy sanctions imposed on Russia.
In particular because the national economy is far from having experienced its best period. The Turkish lira has lost even more value against the dollar since the outbreak of the war, exacerbating a trend that pushed the inflation rate to 61% last March.
There are elections in a year and, Kuneralp explained, the main concern of Turkish citizens is not foreign policy but economic stability.
Péria-Peigné, on the other hand, adopts another point of view: “I think that the role of mediator that Erdoğan plays is precisely to attenuate the foreign policy interventionism of recent years, to present himself to his voters as an actor more neutral and moderate figure.”
On one thing, however, all the interlocutors agree: Turkey also wants peace. The problem is that now neither Ukraine nor NATO nor Russia seem willing to make an effort to end the war.
euronews Gt