Domestic Hurdles are Altering Turkey’s Role in Russia’s war on Ukraine
Since Russia invaded Ukraine last February, Turkey's geopolitical stature has become more prominent. During the war, Erdoğan played a major role in orchestrating Moscow and Kyiv's only two tangible agreements.
Firstly, Turkey, the UN, Russia, and Ukraine signed an agreement in Istanbul in July 2022 to resume grain exports from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports, which had been halted after the Russia-Ukraine war started. The exports had stopped due to the Russian navy preventing traffic from entering and leaving Ukrainian ports. As a result, global food prices soared, posing a major threat to countries already experiencing food shortages. Ukrainian supplies were heavily relied upon by some countries, and also provided around 40 percent of the World Food Programme’s wheat supplies. According to Erdoğan, the exchange resulted from Tukey’s ‘multipronged diplomacy’ with Zelensky and Putin.
Secondly, in September 2022, Turkish and Saudi Arabia brokered deals between Russia and Ukraine to release several hundred prisoners. As part of the exchange, Russia released 215 prisoners, including Ukrainian soldiers, police officers, civilians, and others. In exchange, Russia received 55 Russians and a pro-Kremlin politician from Ukraine. After the exchange, Erdoğan claimed that it served as ‘an important step towards ending the war’.
However, Erdoğan’s usefulness as an interlocutor is limited. Erdoğan’s public requests to Putin to end the war have had no impact. In the background, Erdoğan is dramatically increasing trade with Russia to take advantage of Moscow's diplomatic isolation. Following a meeting with Putin in August 2022, he announced a broad economic cooperation agreement that switched most of Turkey's trade with Russia to rubles. As a result, the U.S. expressed concern that the deal could help Russia avoid sanctions that the West hopes will eventually force Putin to end the conflict. In addition, Turkey has not imposed the same sanctions against Russia as the West.
Then on 6 February, two earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria, causing ongoing aftershocks, leaving 45,089 people dead and over 100,000 injured. 13 million people in 10 provinces were affected by the 7.7-magnitude and 7.6-magnitude earthquakes. Two weeks later, Turkey was hit by two more powerful earthquakes in the southern province of Hatay, with Turkey’s interior minister, Süleyman Soylu, reporting that at least three people were killed and 213 wounded. It is likely that the earthquakes in Turkey will have geopolitical and economic spillover effects, including those that will impact the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The earthquake relief efforts could now divert Erdoğan from his role as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine.
To add to this, Turkey is also preparing for general elections in the spring. As a result of Turkey's strategic significance, which has been strengthened by the war in Ukraine, the outcome of these elections will have a big impact on Turkey's future political course. Despite Erdoğan’s determination to win the election, his popularity has been plummeting, making the outcome of the election uncertain. A recent survey conducted in January 2023 shows that Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş, two mayors from the main opposition party - the Republican People's Party - are leading against Erdoğan.
The election outcome will have a significant impact on the geopolitical and economic calculations made in Washington and Moscow. There will be a lot of relief among Western leaders if Erdoğan leaves office. Through the acquisition of Russian missile-defence systems, he has undermined NATO's security, frustrated the alliance by preventing Sweden and Finland from joining, and repeatedly threatened to flood Europe with refugees, as well as hurling increasingly bellicose rhetoric toward Greece in recent months.
Whilst Erdoğan has succeeded as a mediator where many other of his NATO counterparts have not, the motives behind his actions and the extent of his impact on the war in Ukraine have been criticised by the West, especially after his recent claims that the West is responsible for making the Ukraine crisis worse. As a result, it is unlikely that Erdoğan’s disruptive influence on international affairs, which has diminished since the earthquakes struck and risks diminishing even more so following the elections, would not be missed by the U.S. and Europe.