Ankara moves toward ‘privileged partnership’ with Moscow

“We have proposed a similar step [to the joint cabinet meetings with Syria and Iraq] with Russia, but there is nothing being implemented at the moment,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said last week before departing for a visit to Iraq, during which he and the nine ministers accompanying him held a joint cabinet meeting with the Iraqi government. Erdoğan and his Iraqi counterpart, Nouri al-Maliki, co-chaired the meeting of the Turkish-Iraqi High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council.

Earlier last week, a ministerial-level meeting of the Turkish-Syrian High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council was held in the Syrian city of Aleppo and the Turkish city of Gaziantep. At the time, Erdoğan said an agreement to initiate a similar mechanism with Russia was signed when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Ankara in August, when Turkey and Russia signed about 20 agreements on cooperation in a number of areas, including, most notably, energy. “We will put into force a similar mechanism with Russia.”

The timing of the meeting planned to be held with Russia has been found particularly interesting as it comes just before a December summit of the European Council. Observers suggest that the planned meeting with Russia is a message to European Union members who offer a “privileged partnership” to Turkey instead of full EU membership. Turkey will show how a privileged partnership is constituted through the meeting with Russia, the same observers argue. Turkey firmly rejects any option that falls short of full EU membership.

The EU opened accession talks with Ankara -- an EU candidate since 1999 -- in October 2005, but they have been progressing slowly amid opposition from France and Germany. The unresolved Cyprus dispute and a slowdown of reforms in Turkey are other factors hampering the accession process.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are the most high-profile European politicians opposed to Turkey's accession. Sarkozy claims Turkey does not belong in Europe, while Merkel promotes privileged partnership, an option Ankara categorically rejects. In Berlin in May, Merkel and Sarkozy made a joint statement declaring that they shared a common position regarding Turkey's accession to the EU, in that it should be offered a privileged partnership, not full EU membership.

The first step toward holding a joint cabinet meeting with Russia was taken on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responding positively to a proposal by his counterpart, Ahmet Davutoğlu. Moves to organize the joint meeting have been continuing since then. The meeting between Russia and Turkey is planned to be held at a ministerial level. Meetings with Iraq and Syria, on the other hand, are chaired by the prime ministers.

Gül discusses Karabakh dispute with Medvedev

President Abdullah Gül had a phone conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about the situation in the Caucasus on Monday, sources at the Turkish Presidency announced.

President Gül reportedly asked Russian President Medvedev to boost efforts to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a territorial dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

During the phone conversation, Gül asked the Russian president to accelerate the process to find a lasting solution for the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, adding that the determinant actor in the South Caucasus is Russia. Presidential sources labeled the Gül-Medvedev talk a “long, comprehensive and useful conversation to make stability and peace in the South Caucasus dominant.”

Pointing to the troubled South Caucasus region, political commentators argue that even positive gestures could destabilize the region. Amid a growing crisis with Azerbaijan due to the Turkey-Armenia rapprochement, President Gül is working hard to push international actors to work for a solution to the problem. 

While the process of the ratification of the protocols to normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia is in progress in both the Turkish and Armenian parliaments, President Gül also met with the Minsk Group's French, Russian and American co-chairs, who have striven for 17 years to solve the problem, during October to ask them to intensify peace negotiations to find a solution for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

During the conversation, Medvedev and Gül also reportedly spoke of Turkish-Armenian relations, and Gül explained how the Karabakh conflict impacted relations between Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey. “We need your support. We want you to continue your support of the preservation of the peace and stability in the region,” Gül said to Medvedev. In turn, Medvedev promised Gül that Russia would always support peace efforts in the region. Gül and Medvedev also spoke of the South Stream gas project, which is planned to transfer Russian gas under the Black Sea. Medvedev thanked Gül for allowing the use of Turkey's territorial waters in the Black Sea.

Gül also recently addressed the same issues while speaking with US President Barack Obama. In addition, during his visit to France Gül asked French President Nicolas Sarkozy to do what he could to accelerate the Azeri-Armenian peace process. “Solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and let's open the borders together. Let the honor of this be yours,” Gül was quoted as saying to Sarkozy. Süleyman Kurt Ankara