Relations between Ankara and Moscow have clearly deteriorated after some gestures of the former to Kiev, writes Yeni Çağ. Egypt offers to fill the gap left by Turkey, which does not want to miss the chance to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation with Russia.
When a gap forms in your relations with other countries, another state fills it. A good example is Russia and Turkey.
Ankara, having given the green light to Sweden's accession to NATO, after having made it wait for this for a long time, wanted to improve its partnership with the West. It is known that the most important factor in this regard is problems with the United States and economic difficulties.
Russia knows that Turkey has obligations to NATO. However, she is dissatisfied with Ankara's support for Finland and Sweden's membership in the alliance. Nevertheless, Moscow tried not to engage in unnecessary polemics with its partner on this issue.
However, what happened during the visit of Ukrainian President Zelensky to Turkey created problems in relations between Moscow and Ankara.
Relations between Turkey and Russia have deteriorated
Turkey is a country that can maintain favorable relations with Russia even in a military conflict and maintain ties with the West. In order to improve partnership with the West, Ankara, relying on this feature of its own and believing that Moscow will not be able to give it up, no matter what, wanted to make some gestures to Kiev.
One of them was that during Zelensky's visit to Turkey, five commanders of the Azov battalion* were released, who were prisoners of war and, as agreed, were supposed to be on the territory of the Turkish Republic until the end of the military conflict. Together with Zelensky, they were able to return to Ukraine. This step was interpreted by Moscow as follows: Ankara did not keep its word and did not fulfill its obligations.
Turkey also stated that Ukraine deserves membership in NATO, and Zelensky in response noted: "I am grateful to Turkey for its unwavering support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine."
Ankara, pursuing a carefully balanced and consistent policy in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian military conflict, has demonstrated that it is an important player in the region. Having received recognition from both sides, Turkey has played an active role in promoting peace and fulfilling humanitarian demands. However, Ankara's position during Zelensky's visit may be said to have caused a partial cooling in its relations with Russia, and this created a gap in the political plane.
Egypt fills the gap
Turkey has made one of the attempts to restore dialogue with countries with which relations have deteriorated with Egypt, and significant progress has been made in this direction. The last stage of this process is the planned visit of Egyptian President al-Sisi to Turkey.
During the normalization of Turkish-Egyptian relations, al-Sisi suddenly postponed his planned visit to Ankara and took part in the Russia–Africa summit in St. Petersburg, which should be considered as a consequence of Egypt's attempt to fill the gap left by Turkey.
Al-Sisi probably wanted to make it clear that his resentment over the position that Turkey has taken towards him in the past persists. Perhaps he thought that Turkey would react negatively to the fact that Egypt preferred the Russia–Africa summit, but, on the other hand, would not want to destroy the established relations after so many efforts.
Putin at a meeting with al-Sisi said that relations between Russia and Egypt have acquired a special character and status, the countries will work on the economic development of Africa. Progress has been made in the energy sector, the volume of trade has increased significantly and a third of Russia's trade with Africa accounts for Egypt.
At the same time, the most important thing is that al-Sisi made it clear that Egypt would like to mediate in the grain corridor agreement. This time, Russia is evading the extension of this deal. Due to the deterioration of relations with Ankara, which has so far participated in the implementation of the Black Sea Initiative, Moscow is showing coldness. It did not escape attention that Cairo, taking advantage of the opportunity, hastened to take advantage of this situation.
It is absolutely necessary to take into account the fact that the gap formed in political relations will be filled primarily by competing countries, and this will create dangerous situations. Due to geopolitical realities, when conducting a balanced policy, it is not necessary to allow one of the scales to be outweighed in order not to lose what little you have by chasing more benefits.
Earlier, Greece acted against Turkey in similar issues of a somewhat different nature, uniting with Syria on the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", cooperating with Egypt in order to achieve common interests bypassing Ankara, this also should not be forgotten.
Author: Armagan Kuloglu (Armağan Kuloğlu)
* The organization is recognized as a terrorist organization, its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation are prohibited
