With Russia at war against Ukraine and also instigating a diplomatic and trade war against Turkey, the prospects for better Ukraine-Turkish relations would appear to as bright as ever.
Turkish Ambassador to Ukraine Yönet C. Tezel, in an interview this month, said that Ukraine and Turkey have already been accelerating their bilateral ties — even before Turkey shot down a Russian war plane on Nov. 24, triggering retaliatory sanctions by Moscow against Ankara.
So Tezel doesn’t see a change of direction in bilateral relations ahead, however, since relations between Ukraine, with 44 million people, and Turkey, with 75 million people, have been solid for a long time.
“Already, we were on the same path, with good relations and trying to build on that,” Tezel said. “There may be increasing momentum. I would be happy for that. It wouldn’t be a big shift in direction. We are already seeing eye to eye on many issues.”
President Petro Poroshenko is expected to visit Ankara early next year as both nations try to reach a free-trade agreement that may increase bilateral trade.
Ukraine has, however, been critical of Turkey for not joining in Western-led sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea and its war against eastern Ukraine.
But Tezel said that Turkey doesn’t believe sanctions are the best option in this case.
Moreover, Turkey is not a member of the European Union, the 28-nation bloc that decided on the specifics of the sanctions.
He notes that many European nations continue trading with Russia, despite the “selective sanctions” adopted by the EU, the United States and other nations.
He noted that Russian-Turkish trade is down in the last year and that, politically, Turkey has sided with Ukraine and not Russia on the issue of Crimea and the war in the Donbas.
“We don’t join sanctions because we don’t think sanctions are necessarily the best tool,” Tezel said. “If we are expected to join sanctions each time our partners, allies decide sanctions in a room where we are not present, where we are not consulted at all, just automatic joining, first of all, that’s not fair.”
Besides, the ambassador said: “We live in such a neighborhood, we live in such a region that if we are to follow sanctions automatically, we will always be in a place surrounded by countries with sanctions. We will follow sanctions if they are United Nations sanctions…It’s very wrong to talk about Turkish opportunism.”
But sanctions came to Turkey after Russia retaliated for the Turkish shoot-down of the Russian Su-24 that strayed into Turkish airspace.
Russia has started banning some Turkish imports. It has cut off visa-free travel starting January and, as the Kyiv Post has discovered, some Turks have already been denied entry into Russia. Additionally, Russia has banned charter flights to Turkey and urged Russians not to vacation there — taking away potentially 4.5 million visitors a year. Turks in Russia have also faced harassment from Russians.
It is all part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to make Turkey regret “more than once” its shooting down of the Russian plane, which led to the death of one pilot.
Additionally, Turkey found itself on the receiving end of Russian propaganda — a situation that Ukrainians know all too well from the last two years as the Kremlin demonized the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych from power in Ukraine on Feb. 21, 2014.
The Kremlin has accused Turkey of siding with terrorists against Russia in the Middle East and with buying oil from Daesh, also known as the Islamic State.
Tezel finds such accusations absurd.
American officials as well as Iraqi Kurdish groups have spoken against Russian accusations. He notes that Turkey has long been trying to forge an international coalition against Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, who has used chemical weapons and barrel bombs to kill 380,000 of his own people since 2011.
Many think it is this viciousness that spawned Daesh, or the terrorists purporting to act in the name of Islam.
Russian bombing, he said, is benefiting the Damascus regime of Assad. He said most of the targets are Turkomans and other moderate groups supported by the international coalition, not Daesh.
As for how long the deep freeze will remain in Turkish-Russian relations, Tezel said: “It depends on Russia really.”
Turkey sees nothing to apologize for over after the Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter jet shot down the Russian Sukhoi Su-24M bomber aircraft on Nov. 24.
“From the first day we declared we don’t want to escalate things at all,” Tezel said. “We are not going to apologize because the incident is not our fault…It was a defense of air space against unidentified aircraft not heeding our warnings and violating our air space. This about legitimate self-defense. This was not an attack on Russia.”
The border region “has been very volatile. Syria had shot down a Turkish plane and we had put in place special rules of engagement for airspace violations. These were clearly explained to Russia, especially after their first violations on Oct. 3-4.”’
He said “this is the hottest spot for Turkey right now,” with 2.5 million people entering Turkey from the Syrian border since the civil war there began. If the turmoil and the bombings against civilians in the region continue, more refugees could move toward Turkey and Europe. “The international community should work together to prevent that. Russia has to help and not complicate things by its actions in Syria.”
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected]
