Despite his diplomatic gains over the past year, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s cautious dance between Ukraine and Russia can’t be declared a success quite yet. Fehim Tastekin analyzes in Al-Monitor on February 24, 2023.
Drawing on Turkey’s geo-strategic standing, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has played both sides in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, earning himself the role of a mediator and expanding his maneuvering room to make other gains.
But as the war enters its second year on Friday, Erdogan’s balance sheet is cloudy as he looks to Russian favors to boost his reelection chances at home, while doubts mount over his commitment to NATO in the West.
Having fostered military cooperation with Kyiv and rejected Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Erdogan maintained his policy after Russia invaded Ukraine. During the battle of Kyiv, the Bayraktar TB2s drones that Turkey supplied to Ukraine destroyed Russian air defense systems, command centers and supply convoys. They also targeted the Russian deployment at the Snake Island off Odessa and reportedly played a role in the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Ukrainians were so elated that they dedicated a song to the drones.
Turkey’s assistance angered Russian President Vladimir Putin. Two Turkish military cargo planes that flew to Ukraine shortly before the invasion began, allegedly carrying drones, remained stranded there for 10 months before Russia gave assurances for their safe return home.
Nonetheless, Turkish arms deliveries to Ukraine reportedly continued via Poland. Since March, Turkey has supplied Ukraine with at least 35 Bayraktar TB2s, 24 Bayraktar mini drones, guided multiple rocket launchers, armored vehicles, mortars, electronic warfare equipment and munitions, according to the open-source intelligence site Oryx.
With Russia targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Turkey has sought to help Ukraine in terms of electricity, including plans to provide it with floating power stations.
However, Erdogan has also refused to join the Western sanctions against Russia, offering Moscow an economic lifeline.
Russian businesses have come to use Turkey as a transit hub to ship European goods, mostly technological products, to Russia. Turkey’s skies have remained open to Russian planes, while the Turk Stream pipeline has emerged as the only conduit that still carries significant amounts of Russian gas to Europe.
Erdogan has sought Russian favors in return. The Russian company building Turkey’s first nuclear power plant injected additional funds into the project to make it operational later this year and pledged to put dollars into Turkish sovereign bonds or bank deposits. In another move to help alleviate Turkey’s foreign currency crunch, Moscow has agreed to accept 25% of Turkish gas payments in rubles. Erdogan has been pushing also for a 25% discount for the price of the gas and deferral of payments until after the elections.
Under Erdogan, Ankara’s Moscow policy has been one of cooperation within conflict, including in Syria and Libya. After Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet at the Syrian border in 2015 and the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Ankara the following year, Erdogan sought to make amends by purchasing Russia’s S-400 air defense systems, overriding the concerns of NATO allies. In 2020, Turkey boosted its profile in the Caucasus, Russia’s backyard, by helping Azerbaijan defeat Armenia in a war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. By the outbreak of the Ukraine war, Erdogan and Putin had gained ample experience of dealing with each other, with Putin flexible enough to work with a tough and pragmatist counterpart who keeps a foot in both NATO and Russia’s playground.
Erdogan’s policies over the past year raise some questions:
For one, his balancing act has enabled him to speak to both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Turkey brought the two warring parties together twice in March, though without results. Erdogan has had at least 18 phone calls and four face-to-face meetings with Putin since Feb. 23. In July, Turkey and the United Nations brokered a deal that cleared the way for Ukrainian grain exports. The following month, Erdogan, Zelenskyy and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met in Lviv to discuss an expansion of the deal and the security of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine. Turkey hosted a meeting between the United States and Russian intelligence chiefs in November and talks between Russian and US diplomats the following month.
Erdogan’s mediation efforts have failed to bring the warring parties to the table thus far, but the West can’t give up a NATO ally who is able to speak to Putin. He has won kudos for brokering the grain deal and a subsequent prisoner exchange.
On the other hand, Ankara’s refusal to join the sanctions against Russia, coupled with its blocking of NATO’s Nordic enlargement, has fueled questions in the West over whether it is a true ally. Is the mistrust reparable? For Erdogan, at least, good relations with Russia does not mean Turkey must retreat from its place in the West.
In fact, Turkey began to drift away from the West a long time ago as Erdogan’s rule eroded democracy, freedoms and human rights in the country. Erdogan is fine with contributing to NATO as long as his partners stay mum on the oppressive regime he is building at home. Yet his blockage of the Swedish and Finnish bids to join NATO has presented a new predicament.
Holding up NATO’s enlargement has served to absorb Putin’s anger at Turkey’s military assistance for Ukraine, in addition to two other purposes: pressuring Sweden to abandon its policy of protecting Kurdish and other dissidents from Turkey and providing Ankara with a bargaining chip in thorny dossiers with Washington, chief among them its request to buy new F-16 jets. Erdogan calculates that the West lacks the leverage to exact concessions from him. Those who accuse Erdogan of serving Putin by blocking the enlargement, atop bringing a Trojan Horse into the alliance by buying the S-400s, can do little more than say so.
A few other points are worth mentioning with respect to the gains and constraints of Erdogan’s maneuvering.
First, Russia’s preoccupation with Ukraine serves Turkey’s efforts to boost its influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia. But this is not to say that Russia has lost ground in its backyard and Turkey now has a free hand there. In the wake of the Nagorno-Karabakh war, the opening of a new regional transport route –— a prospect Erdogan eagerly awaits — depends on Russian leadership. Also, Russia would be in charge of securing the route, dubbed the Zangezour corridor. And any new Caspian-linked energy routes would require Russian and Iranian blessings. Turkey might narrow Russia’s maneuvering room in the region should it move to normalize ties with Armenia without waiting for Azerbaijan to reach a peace deal with Armenia. Yet its tight rapport with Azerbaijan is an obstacle.
Second, the increased flow of Azerbaijani gas to Europe via Turkey adds to Turkey’s value for the West. But amid Europe’s efforts to wean itself off Russian gas, Putin threw a curve ball in October by offering to set up a regional gas hub in Turkey. Though the merits of the proposal remain unclear, Erdogan has eagerly welcomed it.
Russia still appears to have a strong influence in the country and Erdogan’s need for rapport with Putin is not over, as evidenced by his reluctant bid to launch a fresh military operation against Kurdish-held areas, without a green light from Russia. The areas where Turkey listed as targets for a potential operation remain under Russian influence and air protection. Moscow, however, has succeeded in cajoling Ankara into fence-mending with Damascus.
In the lead-up to the Turkish elections, due in June at the latest, Erdogan is under pressure to deliver some economic relief to a crisis-hit electorate. He has pinned hope on financial support from Gulf countries with which he recently reconciled, and the opportunities brought about by the war in Ukraine.
According to Turkish media reports, Moscow has agreed to defer $20 billion in pending Turkish gas payments to 2024. If confirmed, the move will reinforce the widespread conviction that Putin is betting on Erdogan in the elections, the toughest the Turkish leader has faced in his two-decade rule.
All in all, Turkey’s deepening interdependence with Russia could become a major problem for the West, as it tries to sway the NATO-member away from Moscow.
Fehim Tastekin analyzes in Al-Monitor on February 24, 2023.