Complicated power plays

Russia’s involvement in Syria introduced tensions between the two countries. In November 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near its border with Syria. Turkey said the aircraft was in its airspace at the time and had ignored warnings to leave. Russia insisted the aircraft had remained within Syria’s borders and had received no warnings. For a few days there were fears of a confrontation, which would have been the first between Russia and a Nato member.

The two countries started to patch things up in 2016, against a backdrop of a deterioration of relations between Turkey and the US over Washington’s support for Kurdish militias in Syria. In July of that year, after an attempted coup by a faction of the Turkish army, Putin was quick to express solidarity with Erdoğan, who then made Russia his first port of call after the coup. Erdoğan also apologised to Russia for the shooting down of its aircraft, offering compensation to the family of the Russian pilot who died.

In 2017, Turkey concluded a US$2.5 billion (£1.9 billion) deal with Russia to purchase the S-400 mobile surface-to-air missile system. For Nato, the prospect of Russian systems being integrated into Nato’s larger defence structure were extremely worrying. The then Trump administration duly imposed sanctions on Russia. Relations hit rock bottom.

To complicate things further, in 2019 Bayraktar – a company owned by Erdoğan’s son-in-law Selçuk Bayraktar – started to sell to Ukraine its combat drone Bayraktar TB2. These are cheaper than their western equivalents but have inflicted a great deal of pain on Russian convoys, surprising military analysts.

Playing the honest broker

This history has given Turkey a unique position as a host for talks. Being seen to help resolve the crisis in Ukraine will no doubt help Ankara improve its relations with the west, which seems ready to pursue a degree of rapprochement with one eye on what Turkey could do to help with instability in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as developments in the South Caucasus and Afghanistan.

Turkey also needs to keep on the good side of Russia. It was recently suggested that Turkey might supply Ukraine with the Russian S-400 systems it purchased in 2017. But this would irredeemably jeopardise relations with Russia, which would be the last thing Ankara wants given the extent to which Turkey’s economy benefits from good relations with Moscow.

Russian tourists nowadays dominate Turkey’s tourism sector representing 28% of all tourists. In addition, Turkey relies on Russia for 45% of its natural gas, 17% of oil and 40% of its gasoline.

So, faced with a need to improve relations with both Russia and the west, playing the role of mediator in Ukraine will suit Erdoğan’s purposes well. The country also has a track record of mediation in the Middle East and the Caucasus and is an acknowledged Black Sea power, as its closure of the Turkish Straits shortly after the Russian invasion clearly demonstrates.

These are high stakes for Erdoğan to play for. So much could go wrong, but if Turkey emerges as having played a key role in ending Russian violence against Ukraine, then its status as a first-level power in the region will have been secured.

Massimo D'Angelo, PhD Researcher at the Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance, Loughborough University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.