As the COP26 conference is taking place, one prominent leader absent is Turkish President Recep Tayyep Erdogan, who cited security concerns as an excuse. Pledging to renounce fossil fuels anytime soon does not fit in the overall Turkish strategy of becoming a regional energy hub (Directorate of Communications, 2020) to cement its position of a powerful actor in the wider area. Indeed, Ankara has been seeking new allies to increase its footprint in the wider region seeking to improve its relations with Azerbaijan and North African states and farther afield. Furthermore, recent gas discoveries in the Turkish Exclusive Economic Zone in the Black Sea may give the country more leverage in the energy sector; however, commercialization of these reserves will take years.
Turkey’s largest rival, Russia, has been also the former’s largest provider of gas and through the Blue Stream gas pipeline both states are locked in a mutually dependent situation. Looking beyond the energy sector, Turkey has been at opposite sides with Russia in all major conflicts around the Mediterranean Sea, most notably in Syria and in Libya, supporting opposing conflict parties and following opposing strategies. In its quest for allies, Ankara seems to have found one in Kiev. The Ukrainian government, frustrated by not receiving stronger support from the West and the improbability of EU accession, and fearing more Russian intrusion in its internal affairs, has been hard-pressed to get financial and military aid from outside as Ukraine still suffers from a lack of internal strength weakened by bad governance, corruption, and consequently, an ailing economy; the latter worsened by the separatist movements in the highly industrialized Donbas region. As a unifying factor, both administrations share concerns how to cope with a strong Russian presence in the Black Sea region.
Growing cooperation across the board between Ankara and Kiev
Notably, at the end of October, Ukraine employed Turkish-produced Bayraktar TB2 armed drones in the the Donbas region against separatists. This year Kiev had purchased 12 Bayraktar TB2 drones. Last September, the Ukrainian defense ministry signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Turkish defense company Baykar Savunma (President of Ukraine, 2021); the Ukrainian engine manufacturer Motor Sich signed a cooperation agreement a few days earlier. The latest developments come in a line of previous drone and other military materiel purchases in the context of advanced military collaboration outlined in a series of military deals signed by former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2015 (Tastekin, 2020). Poroshenko – in contrast to his successor Volodymir Zelensky who initially preferred a political solution through dialogue with Russia – advocated the use of hard power to resolve the Donbas conflict; Zelensky still continued to intensify military cooperation with Turkey signing further deals in 2019 and in 2020 (ibid.).
Besides its provision of military hardware, Turkey also gives support to Ukraine’s calls to return Crimea from Russia. At the end of last August, Turkey participated at the first Crimean Platform Summit in the form of its foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoglu, giving support to this new consultative and coordination format to further the resolution of the Crimean issue (Ukrinform, 2021).
Outside the military sphere, cooperation has advanced in other fields as well. A Free Trade Agreement is being negotiated between Kiev and Ankara which could double the volume of trade between the two countries to $10 billion annually after negotiations had started in 2007 (Jones, 2021). This year has already seen a higher trade volume ($5 billion so far) than in 2019, and last year, Turkey had become Ukraine’s largest foreign investor bringing in $400 million (Jones, 2021). However, trade between both countries has been lopsided though with Ukraine running a $40 billion trade surplus since its independence, especially focused on iron and steel (Jones, 2021). Agriculture, another important area of Ukrainian exports, has been a thorny issue in negotiations as Ukraine depends largely on Turkey where it exported 45% of its products to – soybeans and corn alone accounted for more than 70% in this category (Jones, 2021).
Furthermore, Turkish construction companies have been active in Ukraine finishing over 200 projects there totalling a value of more than $8 billion. Main investments went into building roads, tram lines, luxury hotels, as well as shopping centers (Jones, 2021).
Both states need to diversify their energy sources and ensure the security of their energy supply. The active use of their respective potentials as transit countries as well as the exploration and production of their own energy resources are also common interests. A cooperation between both states was established in 1986 in an agreement between the Soviet Union and the Socialist Republic of Romania on the transit of Soviet natural gas through Romanian territory to Turkey, Greece, and other states. Since then, the bilateral energy relations between Ukraine and Turkey have included the production and distribution of crude oil, gas, coal and metal ores, the exchange of technologies, the construction of pipelines and oil terminals, as well as the cooperation in developing alternative energy sources and civilian nuclear energy production (Zaporozhenko, 2021). Since the TurkStream pipeline was put into service in 2020, Turkey’s dependence on Ukrainian gas has shrunk and does not present a promising area for Ukraine. Instead, cooperation in the use of civilian nuclear energy, and the development and use of alternative energy holds the best outlook (ibid., 2020). This still raises the need to improve connectivity across the Black Sea in the form of pipelines and port infrastructure to enable transport (not only of energy but also other goods).
One of the crucial parts in Ukrainian-Turkish collaboration will be the improvement of transport links. Ukraine has many small-scale seaports along its Black Sea shoreline, which are inefficiently run, but could offer many opportunities under private management. That is why Ukraine’s State Property Fund wants to privatize most of these small ports, three of which will be put up for auction this year; and if successful, another nine shall be privatized (Jones, 2021). Turkey presents for Ukraine a transit country to the Asian market. With the opening of the Kars-Tbilisi-Baku railway in 2017 connecting Turkey to the Caspian Sea, Ukraine has gained greater access to Central Asia and China giving an attractive alternative to Russia, which liked to impede Ukrainian freight imposing heavy restrictions (Jones, 2021).
Moscow will not be pleased
The use of armed drones in the conflict-ridden Donbas region is a surprise move of the Ukrainian authorities. Moscow’s reaction – after condemning the attacks on separatists and warning of a destabilization of the situation – was to amass troops in its south-western border regions. Videos on social media showing military trains and convoys with military hardware including tanks and missiles heading there appeared (Ukraine Crisis Media Center, 2021). It seems unlikely that Russia would start an actual invasion of the separatist territories; more probable would be the transfer of weaponry and other resources to counter the threat of widespread use of Bayraktar drones which are notoriously hard to neutralize as seen in last year’s short war in Nagorno Karabakh. Moscow reacted in a subdued manner only pointing out that such drone attacks may lead to destabilization of the conflict (Krivosheev & Solovev, 2021). However, this comes atop of other developments angering Russia’s leadership like Turkey’s strong involvement in the southern Caucasus and Erdogan’s plans of building the Istanbul canal bypassing the Bosphorus. It seems likely that cooperation in certain strategic fields will be tuned down by Moscow, such as Ankara’s participation in the Astana Process to resolve the Syrian civil war, or that construction of Turkey’s first nuclear plant by Russia’s Atomstroyexport will encounter further delays, reducing Ankara’s options (Oxford Analytica, 2021). In any case, a rapprochement between Ukraine and Turkey cannot be viewed other than a threat to Russia’s hegemonic stand in the Black Sea region. Russia may well use this event to further strengthen its ties with Turkey’s regional rivals in the Eastern Mediterranean and Caucasus, Egypt and Iran, to counter Turkish regional power aspirations.
Washington and Brussels – content to stand by
The US is viewing these recent developments with strong interest; a rapprochement of Turkey with Ukraine fits into NATO’s objectives to improve its stand in the wider region. Ankara’s moves which are obviously directed against Moscow will help easing tensions with Washington. However, in other fields Turkey and the US still are at loggerheads, particularly Turkey’s relations with Russia.
US President Joe Biden has proven himself to be a strong supporter of Kiev having visited the country six times during his time as vice president under Obama (Tastekin, 2020). Hence, Ankara’s aid to Kiev may soften the US-Turkish tensions and improve Ankara’s position vis-à-vis Washington. Turkey’s ambiguous course trying to balance between Russia and the US had left the latter wondering about its NATO ally’s reliability. Anti-Turkish policies implemented under the Trump administration duly led to a collapse of the Turkish lira and dampened economic growth expectations (AP News, 2018).
At the margins of the latest G20 meeting, Biden met with Erdogan to discuss the US-Turkish relationship underlining the American desire to “maintain constructive relations, expand areas of cooperation, and manage (…) disagreements effectively” (White House, 2021). Besides lauding Turkey’s efforts in the well-known conflict areas around the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, Biden also “emphasized the importance of strong democratic institutions, respect for human rights, and the rule of law for peace and prosperity (ibid.). Areas in which Ankara has not exceeded Western expectations.
Thus, taking into consideration the virtual impossibility of Ukraine joining any western alliances, in particular NATO, Washington will probably remain rather neutral for the time being since Ankara’s involvement in the Donbas will have a negative impact on the latter’s relations with Moscow – something that will be viewed positively by the US administration.
For Brussels, as it seems, nothing will have changed in its attitude towards Ukraine and Turkey which have been held at arm’s length and EU accession for either state is highly unlikely. Hardly any reaction came from the EU, most prominently Germany pointed its finger at both parties accusing them of not working hard enough on a peaceful solution (Krivosheev & Solovev, 2021). However, the Normandy format, established together with France to create a mechanism for a peaceful solution, in its more than seven years of existence has not come any closer to resolving this geopolitical conflict. Not to get involved to deeply in this conflict has been – and apparently will be – the EU’s choice of policy. This may lead to unwelcome surprises in the future, especially in the realm of migration, where Ukraine and Turkey have teamed up to ferry illegal migrants to European ports (Belford, Civillini, Horban & Karanikas, 2019). Ankara has proven time and again not to honor its migration pact with Brussels, most recently by abetting the transport of illegal migrants to Belarus stoking a new border crisis. In any case, a rapprochement between Kiev and Ankara will give western institutions a pretext not to engage more with these two states at the EU’s border.
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By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
