Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will try to leverage his strategic position in NATO and his rapport with Russia's Vladimir Putin when he visits Kyiv on Thursday in a bid to head off war in Ukraine.
The veteran Turkish leader hopes mediation between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky can avert a Russian offensive that Washington warns could start by mid-February.
It could also force Ankara to pick sides between Putin -- a leader who holds several economic and military trump cards over Turkey -- and traditional Western allies that have grown impatient with Erdogan's rule. "This is an opportunity for Turkey to elevate its status and come out of the doghouse, metaphorically speaking, in NATO," Asli Aydintasbas of the European Council on Foreign Relations told AFP."Erdogan has developed this unique personal relationship with Putin that is simultaneously competitive and consensual -- allowing them to support different sides in Libya, the Caucasus and Syria.
Putin also appeared to take in stride Turkey's game-changing supply of drones to Azerbaijan during its 2020 war with Moscow-backed ethnic Armenians in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh. He has backed Kyiv's NATO ambitions and approved Ukraine's acquisition of Turkey's Bayraktar TB2 combat drones. "Yes, in an asymmetric fight that pits the Ukrainian army against the forces in the Donbass, a few TB2s can tilt the balance of forces," the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Middle East Program director Aaron Stein told AFP.Most analysts doubt Erdogan would openly confront Putin on Ukraine.
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