President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey says Turkey will not join the west in implementing punitive steps against Russia despite opposing its decisions to recognize the two breakaway states in Ukraine.
President Erdogan says Turkey will not join sanctions against Russia as it can’t all its citizens to freeze without Russian gas.
President Erdogan told president Zelensky that Turkey opposed any decisions targeting Ukraine’s territorial integrity and he had called Putin’s recognition of the breakaway states unacceptable.
If President Erdogan continues to reject joining other members of NATO to impose sanctions against Russia, President Putin of the will of course love it and may not forget because maybe Erdogan is returning a favor after Putin supported him during a failed coup in 2016.
Turkey is heavily dependent on Russia for grains imports, natural gas, and tourists, and also Turkey has got significant agricultural exports and construction businesses in Russia which president Erdogan needs to protect.
Turkey has been in its own economic crisis and now I think Turkey doesn’t have any room economically, politically, or militarily to take a stance against Russia.
Turkey had been facing an economic meltdown like last year its currency the lira slumped by 44% against the US dollar. The weakness of the Turkish currency and high energy prices caused inflation in Turkey to increase to 48% the highest in two decades.
President Erdogan and Putin have had warm relations and they have been either meeting or calling each for some time they have managed to find common ground on competing interests between two countries in Syria, Libya, and during a conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Turkey despite high pressure from the US, bought Russia’s more advanced defense system currently in operation, the s-400. This led the US to impose sanctions against Turkey plus excluding it from the f-35 program.
But also the Turkish defense industry has been cooperating with Ukraine where they have sold drones to the Ukraine military which have been used to destroy Russian tanks and armored vehicles since the war began.
Turkey has also helped to facilitate talks between foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia in Turkey even though nothing important comes out of it but it set more room to continue negotiations with hopes of ending the war.
President Erdogan hopes to leverage on Ukraine war to increase Turkish standing against both EU and US and we wait to see if he can achieve it.
