Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has used trilateral talks with his Iranian and Russian counterparts in Tehran to advocate another Turkish invasion of northwestern Syria.
Erdoğan cited Kurdish forces in Tel Rifaat and Manbij, two cities in north-western Syria where Russian and Iranian forces have a presence, as justification for expanding Turkey’s zone of control in the country. “What we expect from Iran and Russia is to support Turkey in its fight against terrorist organizations,” he said at a press conference after the meeting.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during talks in his office, warned Erdoğan against another invasion, stating that “a military invasion of Syria will benefit the terrorists.”
The visit to Tehran provided Erdoğan with an opportunity to reaffirm ties with both Tehran and Moscow, along with numerous opportunities to promote Moscow’s cooperation on key issues.
Putin and Erdoğan greeted each other warmly at the start of their bilateral talks, despite a brief moment when the Turkish leader kept his counterpart waiting. The talks provided an opportunity for Erdoğan to secure Moscow’s support for a tentative agreement to evacuate grain across the Black Sea with a control center in Istanbul, with UN-backed talks expected to continue in Istanbul this week.
“We have made progress with your mediation. Not all problems have been solved yet, but the fact that there is movement is good,” Putin told Erdoğan. The Turkish president later referred to his counterpart as “my dear friend Putin” during a panel discussion on Syria.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, Turkish authorities have insisted on balancing the country’s NATO membership with its long-standing ties with Moscow.
Turkey has hosted peace talks between Russia and Ukraine and sold armed drones to Ukraine to use against Russian forces. Haluk Bayraktar, who heads the company that manufactures the TB2 drones deployed in Ukraine, said CNN just before Erdoğan arrived in Tehran that his company would never sell drones to Russia as “we support Ukraine, its sovereignty and its resistance”.
But Turkey has declined to join sanctions against Russia, has ramped up its purchases of Russian oil since the invasion and is continuing to push ahead with the construction of a nuclear power plant by Russian state-owned Rosatom, which is threatened by Western sanctions on Sberbank, a key backer of the project.
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“Russia cannot afford not to deal with Turkey. They want a relationship with Turkey as a NATO ally – that would not change even if Putin and Erdoğan resign tomorrow,” said Hanna Notte, an analyst at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation. “But the fact that they deal with issues so efficiently and closely can be traced back to the Putin-Erdoğan relationship,” she added, saying the leaders share elements of anti-Western sentiment that have fueled a longstanding personal relationship .
“They share the view that the world is multipolar, where countries outside the West should have a say in how things are done.”
But Erdoğan’s foreign policy approach is based on showing that Turkey acts independently and puts its interests first. This helps his appeal to a domestic audience ahead of next year’s expected elections, where Erdoğan is facing mounting opposition.
Although Erdoğan had previously overturned objections to Finland and Sweden joining NATO and ensured the cancellation of some arms sales, this week Erdoğan repeatedly threatened to “freeze” his accession if Turkey’s demands are not met. At a NATO summit in Madrid in late June, Erdoğan’s tactics secured him a meeting with US President Joe Biden, who voiced his support for the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, despite continued opposition from Congress.
Last week, the Turkish president leaned on Putin during a phone call in which he urged Russian approval of the UN Security Council’s cross-border aid mechanism, which is providing vital assistance to more than 2 million Syrians in rebel-held areas of the north-west, and fended off Russian threats to deny the aid renewal altogether.
“Because of Ukraine and all these crises at once, all this leverage is created; It would be surprising if Erdoğan didn’t try to get something out of this moment as he is doing,” said Aron Lund of the Washington-based think-tank Century Foundation.
“Under Erdoğan, especially in the second half of his rule, Turkey keeps stoking crises and then gets something for stopping them. That was the modus operandi all along,” said Lund.
“It damages Turkey’s reputation in many countries. We have experienced a serious lack of appreciation for this in the Congress and in the EU Parliament, for example. But Erdoğan doesn’t care, or doesn’t seem to care. He can brag about the results to support public opinion and he benefits domestically – plus Turkey’s advantages in real foreign policy terms, they get results,” he said.