How long will Erdogan hold out?

Ankara persistently continues its mediation efforts between Moscow and Kiev on getting out of the most difficult Ukrainian crisis.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, after a visit to the Russian capital, went to Lvov, where he held talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmitry Kuleba. In his turn, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, offered to hold talks with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in Ankara or Istanbul.

At the same time, the Turkish side, without informing about the details of the negotiations, talks about "new chances for a ceasefire in Ukraine”. "A peace agreement is possible. Now the only question is when it will be achieved and how”, the representative of the Turkish president İbrahim Kalın points out. At the same time, Ankara is simultaneously trying to play on a broader front.

In an interview with the New York Times, Kalın called on the West to "hear Russia's arguments, because after the Ukrainian crisis, a new security architecture should be established between Russia and the Western bloc”. And only if, as Çavuşoğlu believes, Moscow accepts Kiev's offer to accept Turkey as one of the guarantors of Ukraine's security, Ankara can count on receiving a "residence permit" in the proposed new security architecture.

Russia does not disavow such efforts by Turkey. Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that "Moscow appreciates Ankara's efforts to resolve the crisis in Ukraine, although the positions of Russia and Turkey on this issue do not coincide”. Of course, Russia understands that Turkey is striving to increase its status and its systemic role in the world.

But Moscow does not interfere with it in this, even realising that Turkey is far from engaging in purely peacemaking charity. Ankara strives to solve its specific national tasks. The mediation position that it has taken allows it to explain to Western partners why Turkey does not want to burn bridges with Moscow and Kiev.

Ankara shows that, on the one hand, it is an independent player, on the other hand, it hints to the West about the possibility of acting on its side. Turkey is also not interested in the militarisation of Eastern Europe, as it fears that a possible change in the balance of power in the region is not in its favour. At the same time, by and large, it is trying to bring down Moscow on the march, as it is not interested in Russia's full implementation of the goals in the ongoing special operation in Ukraine.

In this regard, experts close to the Turkish government believe that if Moscow succeeds in Ukraine, "it is unlikely that the country will remain in the form in which it exists”, and claim that Turkish diplomacy in contact with Moscow and Kiev is trying to carry out a scenario of Ukrainian neutrality Swedish-style.

Such a course of events is not really acceptable or even not acceptable at all for Russia, but the situation is too pliant, too fluid and too dependent on many factors, including objective properties.

Today the fact that Turkey and Russia are complex partners with a complicated history of relations is being talked and written about a lot. But they have a lot in common. Like Russia, Turkey experienced a tectonic political shock at the beginning of the 20th century, losing its status as an empire. Like Moscow, Ankara experienced another political shock at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, trying to integrate seriously into the West, but found that it was not allowed to go further than the front door.

An intriguing paradox appears: Russia's determined attempt to restore its strategic dignity objectively provides Turkey with the same chance.

But the problem is that it will be difficult for Ankara to keep a "balanced position" on the Ukrainian crisis for a long time, since the collective West is unlikely to allow the Turkish ship to swing on the world's diplomatic waves.

The pressure on Erdogan is increasing. The Pentagon confirmed that Washington is in talks with Ankara about sending Russian S-400s to Kiev in exchange for Turkey's return to the American program for the production of the fifth-generation F-35 fighter and the lifting of sanctions. Such an action is being taken even though Ankara has no right under the agreement to transfer the S-400 to a third party without Russia's consent.

However, experts believe that the discussion around the S-400 demonstrates that this topic is returning to the agenda of US-Turkish relations in the light of events in Ukraine. In this regard, the New York Times claims that the White House is threatening to include Erdogan "in a single sanctions list together with Putin", to force him to walk on a razor's edge. Erdogan is holding on for now. But his further policy and actions will be largely determined by the course of events in Ukraine.