MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are expected to reconsider their dispute
over Syria at a meeting on Tuesday in St. Petersburg, with both leaders interested in a public display of affection to show the West that strained ties have not left them isolated.
over Syria at a meeting on Tuesday in St. Petersburg, with both leaders interested in a public display of affection to show the West that strained ties have not left them isolated.
While Mr. Erdogan has long insisted that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, will need to cede power before any peace deal can be discussed, Russia’s success on the battlefield, backed by Iran, may have altered the calculus.
Mr. Erdogan’s visit to Russia, his first venture outside his country after afailed coup last month, is draped in symbolism because Turkey’s relationships with the United States and the European Union have eroded significantly.
There is a deepening sense in Turkey that its Western allies have failed the solidarity test, given the threat to its existence posed by the July 15 coup attempt. Turkish officials are frustrated that Western capitals have focused on Mr. Erdogan’s purge of tens of thousands of military officers, civil servants and journalists as a worrying sign of his drift toward authoritarianism.
An anti-American campaign erupted in Turkey after Washington showed no indication that it planned to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the reclusive Turkish cleric whom Mr. Erdogan has accused of plotting the coup from his retreat in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.
The meeting in St. Petersburg is in some respects a stunning development, given that through the end of May, Moscow and Ankara were hurling unbridled insults at each other. Russia’s state-run television network attacked Mr. Erdogan as “deceitful” and “unrestrained,” while the Turkish leader accused Russia of engaging in “cheap slander.”
But the Kremlin never misses a chance to try to exploit cracks in the NATO alliance, and it has repeatedly expressed support for Mr. Erdogan since the coup attempt.
Russia’s own ties with the West soured with its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and subsequent intervention in eastern Ukraine, and they have not improved.
So both presidents want to take pains to demonstrate that they have other friends.
“Both want to show to other partners that they are not isolated, they have options, and they have non-Western partners to engage,” said Vladimir Frolov, the foreign affairs columnist for the Russian web magazine Slon.ru. “We will see a lot of symbolism, a lot of dances and gestures, but the specific deliverables will be relatively few, and more to do with Syria.”
Mr. Putin and Mr. Erdogan are often seen as similar: authoritarian, combative, unbending and nationalistic, with little time for niceties like freedom of expression. Both are quick to anger, but can shelve it just as quickly when strategic interests are at stake.
Turkish-Russian strains developed abruptly in November, after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet that had briefly violated its airspace from Syria, and one pilot was killed by ground fire. Mr. Putin demanded an apology, and Mr. Erdogan refused.
Both sides set about severing robust economic relations worth about $30 billion annually in trade, a number that the two presidents had previously pledged to increase to $100 billion by 2020.
Russia slapped on economic sanctions, cutting Turkey off from lucrative construction contracts and apparently discovering health problems with fruits and vegetables that, months earlier, the Russian government had praised as wholesome. Charter flights were halted, with millions of Russians who had vacationed in Turkey ordered to stay home.
At the same time, two crucial energy projects sought by Russia — a nuclear power plant that it planned to build and a major gas pipeline seen as an alternative route to those blocked by Europe — were frozen.
Even before the failed coup, Mr. Erdogan had begun to feel isolated and had made approaches to Israel, another longtime trading and diplomatic partner with whom he had fallen out, and to Russia. He sent Mr. Putin a letter to apologize for shooting down the fighter jet and promised to bring those responsible to justice.
Economic links are being restored, although local Russian producers do not want to compete with the same volume of imports of cucumbers and tomatoes, for example. The countries agreed to resume military contacts and counterterrorism cooperation.
The coup attempt sped up the process, as Mr. Putin immediately expressed solidarity with Mr. Erdogan. “We have received unconditional support from Russia, unlike other countries,” Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said in a recent interview on Haberturk TV, a private broadcaster.
Aside from the symbolism, both men have a concrete interest in relaxing tensions over Syria, where Mr. Erdogan has called for the removal of Mr. Assad and Russia has devoted considerable military muscle to propping him up.
“The most substantive talks they could engage in would be about Syria,” Mr. Frolov said, “to engineer a political solution that accommodates each other’s interests.”
There are steps both could take to help stabilize the situation there. Mr. Erdogan would like less Russian support of the Kurds and less bombing along the border, which has driven refugees into Turkey. Russia has already stopped insisting on separate Kurdish representation at peace talks.
Moscow, in turn, would like Turkey to assert greater control over its border to stem the flow of volunteers and arms to groups Russia considers threatening. Russia is especially concerned about rebel organizations able to pressure Damascus or attack the region around Latakia, where Russia has its main air base.
“We would like to look at the future with more hope,” Ibrahim Kalin, Mr. Erdogan’s spokesman, said in a recent interview with the Russian state-owned news agency Tass. “In cooperation with Russia, we would like to facilitate a political transition in Syria as soon as possible.”
Many of Turkey’s problems stem from the failure of its policy on Syria. For years, it supported Sunni Islamist groups fighting against Mr. Assad’s government.
But that backfired, and the strains have mounted: millions of refugees, attacks by the Islamic State, and the growing power of Kurdish militias in northern Syria that have ties to Kurdish militants in Turkey who are fighting the Turkish Army. These factors have pushed Turkey to reconsider its stance that Mr. Assad must relinquish power for peace in Syria, analysts say.
“If Turkey begins to shift away from its past position on Syria, a big problem will be disappearing,” said Soli Ozel, a Turkish columnist and a professor at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.
Still, Mr. Kalin kept to Turkey’s official line on Mr. Assad, saying, “It is impossible to talk of a political transition in Syria as long as Bashar al-Assad remains in power.”
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