Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is acutely aware of how destructive the Russian war on Ukraine can be for his country’s already ailing economy. On the first day of the invasion alone, the Turkish lira dropped by over five per cent against the US dollar.

The popularity of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the president himself have been plunging against the backdrop of soaring energy and food prices. At the same time, Turkey has long and close political ties with Russia. Erdogan and his Russian counterpart have worked closely together on a range of foreign policy issues, from Syria and Libya to the Azerbaijan-Armenian conflict, even if they stood on the opposite sides of those issues. They also have much in common: leadership styles, world outlooks shaped by their respective irredentist projects, and shared attitudes towards the liberal, democratic West. They certainly are of the same mind on sanctions from that direction.

It is little wonder that, in its attempt to calm tensions ahead of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ankara should focus on that matter. For several weeks, the mainstream Turkish media cautioned that escalating sanctions against Moscow would be counterproductive. Presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin put it bluntly in an interview with Die Welt: “Sanctions against Russia are useless. You only postpone the problems,” he said, adding that “Russia feels threatened by NATO” so “new rules and principles” were needed for both Russia and the West to “feel safe.”

The Turkish experience with US sanctions following its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system would naturally have informed this stance. But the economic impact of sanctions on Russia appears of greater concern. “Any sanctions imposed on Russia will have an adverse effect on the Turkish economy,” Fatih Ceylan, Turkey’s Permanent Representative to NATO from 2013 to 2018, warned in an interview with Cumhuriyet newspaper.

“The scope of the sanctions against Russia could be broadened soon, and Turkey may be asked to act accordingly. How Turkey will comport itself in this situation needs to be discussed in detail. The situation could narrow Turkey’s diplomatic field and push Turkey into corner.... Therefore, Turkey needs to act very cautiously.”

Economically, Turkey is stuck between a Ukrainian wall and a Russian hard place. Its annual trade volume with Russia is $34.7 billion and with Ukraine it is $7.4 billion. Turkey is dependent on Russia for 33.6 per cent of its natural gas, and both countries are important sources of food and tourism for Turkey. Russians and Ukrainians made up 15 and eight per cent, respectively, of the tourists who visited Turkey in 2021. On the other hand, Kyiv has become a main importer of Turkey’s Bayraktar drones, leading Russia to accuse Ankara of feeding Ukrainian militaristic zeal.

Much to Ankara’s dismay, therefore, Turkey has come under increasing pressure to get off the fence. “Turkey must not remain neutral,” said Ukraine’s Ambassador to Ankara Vasyl Bodnar, and Kyiv has officially asked Ankara to close the Bosporus and Dardanelles to Russian warships. Ankara has resisted the appeal. In remarks to Hurriyet newspaper on 25 February, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Turkey was obliged by international law to allow Russian warships through these straits. Under the 1936 Montreux Convention, Turkey has the right to limit the passage of warships through the straits during wartime or if threatened, but otherwise the convention guarantees the free passage of civilian vessels in peacetime, and restricts the passage of naval ships that do not belong to Black Sea states .

Opinion from across the Turkish political spectrum agrees that Ankara should uphold the terms of the convention. Turkey must strictly adhere to the Montreux agreement; “it is not at war,” said Ali Oztunc of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). “Considering the current fragility of our economy, priority should be given to minimising the possible repercussions of the crisis on our country,” the opposition IYI (Good) Party said in a statement.

On Sunday, 27 February, Cavusoglu reiterated his country’s intent to act clearly and transparently in accordance with the principles of the Montreux Convention. Yet, he introduced a crucial shift in rhetoric that allows Turkey to enact the articles of the 1936 Montreux Convention permitting it to limit naval transit through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits during wartime. Until this point, Ankara had refrained from using the term “war”. By Sunday, that had changed. “At the beginning, it was a Russian attack and we evaluated it with experts, soldiers, and lawyers,” Cavusoglu told CNN Türk that day, as reported in Hurriyet. “Now it has turned into a war. This is not a military operation; it is officially a state of war.”

Nevertheless, he was careful to recall the article in the convention that states that “vessels of war belonging to belligerent powers, whether they are Black Sea powers or not, which have become separated from their bases, may return thereto.” Cavusoglu stressed that the text was clear on this matter. “There should be no abuse. The ship should not be involved in a war after reporting that it was passing through the Bosphorus to return to base.”

That provision gives Ankara some wiggle room to avoid incurring Putin’s wrath, which it felt in the form of stinging economic boycotts after the downing of the Russian Su-24 over Syria in 2015. On the other hand, the above mentioned provision does not apply to Russian ships leaving the Black Sea. Might Turkey suddenly invoke the Montreux Convention to prevent Russian ships from sailing to the Russian naval base in Tartus, Syria, for example?

The Kremlin may have anticipated this. Last week, Russian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Mikhail Bogdanov announced that his country supports the participation of Syrian Kurds in the “constitutional reform process” in Syria. Senior Russian officials have reportedly met with Syrian Kurdish leaders, who have established de facto autonomy in northeastern Syria, to discuss this. To Ankara, the Russian stance lends an unacceptable legitimacy to Syrian Kurdish political forces which it regards as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has been banned in Turkey. Turkey has staged numerous incursions into northern Syria to strike Kurdish targets it has tagged “terrorist,” yet these operations have always required a tacit Russian go-ahead.  Bogdanov’s recent announcement signalled that if Turkey does not tread carefully with the Ukraine question, Russia could respond via Syria, in which crisis the Erdogan regime has huge political, economic and military stakes.

So, how is Erdogan to strike a balance? He has attempted to advance himself as a mediator, but his offers were shrugged off. As Cengiz Candar pointed out in Al Monitor, “Putin, who prefers direct negotiations with Biden, did not pay much attention to Erdogan’s initiative, and his planned visit to Turkey, which was announced by Erdogan himself, has yet to materialise. Similarly, there are no indications showing that Turkey’s mediation offer was considered seriously by Washington. No Western leaders referenced Ankara during the intensity of their frenzied diplomatic traffic to find an off-ramp to the crisis.”

In an article for War on the Rocks, Selim Koru, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, argues that Erdogan, who has been pivoting away from NATO and the West, sees the Ukraine crisis from a different perspective. “The natural position for Turkey to be right now is on the fence. It is true that Turkey has strong relations with Ukraine, but that isn’t necessarily an effort to balance against Russia. Turkish officials have told me in the past that they were actually disappointed to see such decidedly anti-Russian and pro-Western sentiment in their Ukrainian counterparts. They would much rather Kyiv be nationalistic but non-aligned, and therefore in need of a friendly middle power like Turkey.” Still, he adds, “Things being as they are, Turkey’s immediate consideration is economic.”

A version of this article appears in print in the 3 March, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.