Turkey on Tuesday requested a ceasefire from Russia and Ukraine ahead of a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, scheduled for this week in Kazakhstan.
As a NATO member, Turkey maintains a neutral role and maintains good relations with its two Black Sea neighbors.
As a mediator, he played a key role in the prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine in September and the UN-mediated agreement in July to allow the export of Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea.
Twice he brought together Russian and Ukrainian delegates to negotiate on his territory.
Erdogan has met with Putin three times in recent months and also maintains a fluid dialogue with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with whom he speaks regularly on the phone.
The Turkish president has long tried to bring the two leaders together to negotiate a ceasefire, but the deteriorating situation on the ground is hampering these efforts.
“The situation is getting worse”
“Unfortunately,[both sides]quickly drifted away from diplomacy,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said in a television interview after the meeting between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul in March.
“The longer the war between Ukraine and Russia continues, unfortunately the situation gets worse and more complicated,” he said, calling for an immediate ceasefire. “A ceasefire must be established as soon as possible. The sooner the better,” he said.
Erdogan maintains a good working relationship with Putin despite many differences on geopolitical issues such as the situation in Syria.
A senior Turkish official told AFP on Tuesday, on condition of anonymity, that the two leaders will meet in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Thursday on the sidelines of a regional summit.
Turkey, which is heavily dependent on Russian oil and gas, has avoided complying with Western sanctions against Russia.
The latest meeting between Erdogan and Putin stretches back to September this year, on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan.
The Turkish leader wants to increase trade with Moscow to stabilize his troubled economy ahead of the presidential elections in June.
Erdogan has yet to condemn Russia’s bombing attacks in several Ukrainian cities on Monday, which killed 20 and injured more than 100.
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu called his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba after the attacks and said he did not give further details.
source: Noticias
