What is to be expected after the Erdogan-Putin summit?

On August 5, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a four-hour meeting in Russia to discuss bilateral ties and regional issues. The Sochi summit comes after Ankara scored a diplomatic victory by helping broker a grain deal between Turkey, Ukraine and Russia that has eased global food crisis fears and growing concerns of possible Turkish military escalation against the Kurds in Northern Syria. What implication will the summit have on the region?

Turkey’s role as a “deal broker” has succeeded in positioning Ankara as Russia’s counterforce in the region. The recent diplomatic success has shifted the asymmetric relation in favor of Moscow to a more balanced one. This would push Erdogan to get what he couldn’t get during the Tehran summit where both Iran and Russia opposed any possible Turkish military intervention in Syria. Hence, after the grain deal, Erdogan will continue his effort in persuading Putin to get a “green light” to attack Syria.

For Erdogan, the intervention in Syria is important as recent polls forecast that Erdogan’s AKP party, amid the worst financial crisis in decades in the country, is not going to do well in the upcoming elections next June. Many factors depend on the domestic situation in Turkey, as Erdogan wants to launch the operation before the elections so he can consolidate his party’s position. Emre Caliskan, a research fellow at the London-based Foreign Policy Center, told Al Jazeera that “Turkey wants to keep its energy flows from Russia over the winter while maintaining economic cooperation to alleviate its difficulties and opening a (currency) swap agreement or getting investment from Russia.” “Erdogan could present this as a victory to the Turkish public and perhaps alleviate the high food and energy prices that are likely to present a challenge in the coming elections,” argues Caliskan. Both sides have signed a roadmap for economic cooperation and intend to increase trade turnover to 100 USD billion. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak shared that both leaders also agreed to switch part of the payments for Russian gas to rubles, distancing themselves from the use of US dollars.

Yahya Bayram Balci, the director of the Institute Français Études Anatoliennes, told the Armenian Weekly that one of the most impressive aspects of the Turkish-Russian relationship is its compartmentalization. This capacity for compartmentalization will continue because each country needs the other. In other words, despite their divergences, the two countries feel the necessity to cooperate in some specific areas. “I think one reason why Moscow and Ankara will preserve this compartmentalization is the fact that Turkey is still, and will remain for a certain time, very distrustful toward its traditional western allies, the US and Europe,” added Balci. For Turkey, the war in Ukraine is to a large extent a war between Russia and the West, hence Ankara judges the West as partly responsible for the crisis. For that reason, it prefers maintaining its current position which maximizes its benefits.

Russia will continue in its strategy of trying to complicate the relations between Turkey and the West. It is in Russia’s interest to detach Turkey from the West which means accepting this partly divergent position between Turkey and the West in the Ukrainian crisis. This was clearly indicated when last month Erdogan reportedly said Putin had suggested setting up a drone factory in Russia during their Tehran meeting. The Kremlin also affirmed that “technical and military cooperation” would be on the agenda at Sochi, an indication of Russia’s interest in procuring Bayraktars. However, such a move would undermine the main plank of Turkish support for Ukraine, as well as raise eyebrows among fellow NATO members and seriously damage relations with the West.

After the meeting, the presidents released a joint statement that addressed the following talking points: