Ahval Feb 03 2022 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is visiting Kiev on Thursday for meetings with his Ukrainian counterpart. The talks are aimed at strengthening a military-industrial partnership opposed by Russia and back NATO offers to prevent a possible Russian invasion of the country. But Erdoğan's efforts to exert Turkey's influence and mediate a solution to the tensions may end in disappointment with possible repercussions for Turkey's regional standing, Le Monde’s Marie Jégo reported. An excerpt of the article follows below: Supporting Ukraine without irritating Russia is the balancing act that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is expected to undertake in Kiev on Thursday. His visit is a strong political signal to his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, at a time when tension is at its highest between Kiev and Moscow, with a large Russian military presence along the border with Ukraine and in Belarus. The game is shaping up to be a close one for Erdoğan, who prides himself on having a privileged relationship with both sides, to the point of having offered to mediate in the conflict. "By bringing the two leaders [Ukraine’s Zelensky and Russian Vladimir Putin] together in our country if they so wish, we can pave the way for restoring peace," he said on Jan. 26, adding that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be an "irrational move on Russia's part". Erdoğan's offer of mediation was immediately rejected by the Kremlin, quick to accuse Turkey of feeding "militaristic sentiment" in Ukraine. At issue is the delivery of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 armed drones to the Ukrainian army, which used them in October to hit a Russian howitzer operated by the separatists of the Donbass supported by the Kremlin. In the eyes of Ukrainian military experts, the possibility of replicating in Donbass the winning combination of Turkish drones and Ankara's military expertise, as Azerbaijan did at the time of the autumn 2020 conflict to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, is a real temptation. The October strike was "a provocation", Putin insisted in a telephone conversation described as heated with Erdoğan on Dec. 3. Since that episode, relations between the two presidents have cooled slightly. Mr Putin has just declined his counterpart's invitation to visit Turkey, postponing the visit until "when the epidemic situation and agendas allow". Despite Russian warnings, Ankara's support for the pro-Western government in Kiev is not waning, on the contrary. Turkey is not ready to give up its defence agreements with Kiev and is even more unlikely to recognise Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula, the original land of the Turkic-speaking Tatars, once under the protection of the Ottoman Empire. The annexation was never recognised by Ankara, despite Russian insistence. To make matters worse, Turkey continues to support Ukraine's and Georgia's bid to join NATO. For the time being, the agreements to be signed on Thursday between Erdoğan and Zelensky - a free trade treaty and several military-industrial agreements - can only increase the Kremlin's ire. Since 2019, Turkey and Ukraine have considerably developed their security partnership. Between 2019 and 2021, the two presidents met five times, which shows how well they are getting along. Not content with buying the Bayraktar TB2s, which tipped the military balance in favour of Turkey's allies in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine has also started producing them on its soil. The cooperation with the Ukrainian military-industrial complex, which has kept some nice remnants from the Soviet era, especially in terms of aircraft engine manufacturing, is a real boon for Ankara, which is anxious to cushion the sanctions imposed on its defence industry after the acquisition of the Russian S-400 anti-missile system in 2019 and the war waged in the autumn of 2020 in Nagorno-Karabakh. As evidence of this growing cooperation, the Turkish company Baykar, which produces the TB2 armed drone, has just acquired a plot of land not far from the Ukrainian air base of Vasylkiv, south-west of Kiev, where a training centre for the piloting and maintenance of drones is being built. Baykar also plans to invest with Ukrainian engine manufacturer Motor Sich and its design office Ivchenko-Progress. In the autumn of 2021, Motor Sich has committed to supplying the Turkish defence contractor with turboprop engines for its new Akinci combat drone, which is more powerful than the TB2 and which Kiev is considering acquiring. In addition to the joint production of engines and the An-178 military transport aircraft, Kiev and Ankara are also planning to produce corvettes together at the shipyards of Mykolaïv, a Ukrainian port on the Black Sea. "For the Ukrainians, it is important to have one more partner on their side, especially one with such a geographical position," explains Bayram Balcı, director of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies (IFEA) in Istanbul. For the Turks, it is urgent to deepen ties with Ukraine, especially in view of Russian actions in the Black Sea. Since the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, Moscow has become the dominant power in the Black Sea, taking over a large part of Ukraine's ships and port infrastructure. Prior to 2014, this role was played by Turkey, which had 44 surface ships compared to Russia's 26. Since then, Moscow has reversed the trend, with 49 surface ships. In addition, the Russian fleet stationed in Crimea has been reinforced. Warships and submarines operating there have now been equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles, capable of hitting targets 2,400 km away, while more Russian spy ships are plying the waters to gather intelligence. Despite the cordial understanding with his "friend" Putin, the Turkish leader increasingly perceives Russia's military expansion in the region as a threat to his country's geopolitical and energy security, especially as Russia's posture in the Black Sea appears to be increasingly aggressive, and not only towards Ukraine. In June 2021, Russian forces fired warning shots at the British warship HMS Defender, which was en route from the Ukrainian port of Odessa to Georgia. And Russia's military elite is upset about the "Sea Breeze" exercises, organised annually since 2019 by the United States, which has invited 32 other countries, including Ukraine, to take part in the summer of 2021. Despite his anti-Western bias, Mr Erdoğan has constantly pleaded for a greater NATO presence in the Black Sea. His concern has been heightened by the discovery of an apparently vast natural gas field off the Turkish coast in the summer of 2020. In 2014, Turkey had condemned the annexation of Crimea, while remaining outside the sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union against Russia. Anxious to accommodate all the players, Erdoğan wants both to strengthen his commitment to NATO, to restore its image tarnished by the purchase of S-400, and to protect its cooperation with Russia in Syria and in the energy field - nearly 40 percent of gas consumed in Turkey is supplied by the Russian company Gazprom. "The Turkish position is quite risky. The fact that Russia controls the situation in Syria is a real sword of Damocles for Turkey," Balcı said. In this respect, the region of Idlib, the last bastion of the rebellion against Bashar-Al-Assad, a province adjacent to Turkey where nearly 3 million displaced people have found refuge, is its Achilles heel. A large-scale Russian attack on Idlib would surely create a new wave of refugees. "This new influx of Syrians to Turkey, which already hosts nearly 4 million, would affect the Turkish authorities and also the countries of the Mediterranean," says the researcher. An open conflict between Russia and Ukraine would be a tragedy, both for Europe and for Ankara, which would be forced to end its balancing act between NATO and Russia and give up its ambitions as a regional power. (This article originally appeared in Le Monde. A link in the French language is available here.) https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2022/02/01/entre-la-russie-et-l-ukraine-l-exercice-d-equilibrisme-du-president-turc-erdogan_6111829_3210.html__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!-4xPQWKcOUHo9psc8t_lj1YXyVDyubFyfyn_OIH5uOd9RJkGp3E3aLAermoUJw$ *