Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been on all fronts to establish Turkey’s strategic importance in the region. On the diplomatic front, he is one of the few leaders to speak to the two belligerents, and if he strongly condemned Russian aggression, he did not vote for sanctions against the Kremlin.
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Recep Tayyip Erdogan dreams of being a peacemaker. On the military front, he delivers combat drones to Ukraine, which have been shown to be effective in inflicting heavy losses on Russian troops, and he also makes full use of the geography, the strategic position of his country, which commands the straits opening onto the Black Sea to pose as an essential interlocutor on the crucial question of Ukrainian cargo ships loaded with cereals.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a pragmatic opportunist reminds us of Didier Billion, Deputy Director of IRIS, the Institute for International and Strategic Relations. “Turkey is a country that counts. This country is now capable of influencing the outcome of a number of political, diplomatic and even military crises.explains the specialist. Turkey, thanks to this conflict, was able to seize opportunities and was able to reaffirm its place in this entire region, in particular contingent on the Black Sea.. For me, the Ukrainian conflict has helped to reveal to as many people as possible the role that Turkey could have. But it was not the Ukrainian conflict as such that objectively made Turkey unavoidable, it was already there before.”
President Erdogan has in fact never made a secret of his ambitions. He does not miss an opportunity to glorify the greatness of Turkey. As in this video mixing images of Hagia Sophia, Turkish fighter planes or Mehmet II, the conqueror of Constantinople.
Bizim here #Kızılelma büyük ve güçlü Türkiye’dir. Malazgirt’ten 15 Temmuz’a destanlar yazan milletimizin kutlu yürüyüşüdür.
Kızılelma, gölgesinde nice mazlumun serinlediği ulu çınardır.
Cebeli Tarık’tan Hicaz’a Balkanlardan Asya’ya tüm insanlığın hasretle beklediğidir. pic.twitter.com/sBLesuGqDH— Fahrettin Altun (@fahrettinaltun) August 24, 2020
He likes religious but also warlike references. In a speech delivered two years ago, on the occasion of the Turkish national holiday, without fear of sinking into emphasis. “We are nothe said, a Nation with an army, we are a nation which is itself an army. If we combine our technological superiority, our remarkable human resources and our spiritual power, with the help of Allah, no power can stand in our way.”
Ukraine is therefore a new opportunity for Turkish President Erdogan to recall that the great powers will have to reckon with Turkey.