Turkish Foreign Ministry sources on Monday denied that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would propose a postponement for Ukraine’s membership to NATO. Sources said parts of Bloomberg’s Monday report did not reflect the truth.
They also highlighted that Türkiye supports diplomatic initiatives aimed at ending the war. After more than a thousand days of the Russian war on Ukraine, which started in February 2022, the said report by Bloomberg claimed that Ankara was preparing a proposal to stop the war and that Kyiv was envisaged to make some concessions to Moscow within the scope of this proposal. The said proposal would be voiced by Erdoğan at the G-20 summit in Brazil he is currently attending, according to Bloomberg.
Türkiye has offered to act as an intermediary to end the more than 2-1/2-year-old war sparked by the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine and has endeavored to maintain good ties with both Moscow and Kyiv. Türkiye shares a maritime border with both Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea and has good ties with both. It opposes Russia’s invasion, as well as Western sanctions against Moscow. A key player in mediation efforts, Ankara helped reach agreements on critical issues related to the conflict and its fallout, such as grain exports and prisoner exchanges. Still, despite occasional proposals from both sides, broader peace talks have failed to progress, mainly due to incompatible demands and underlying distrust.
In the fourth and fifth rounds of talks held in Türkiye’s southern resort city of Antalya in March 2022, weeks after Russia launched its offensive into Ukraine, the sides signed off on the Istanbul Communique. It proposed that Ukraine end its plans to join NATO eventually, have limits placed on its military and would have obliged Western countries to help Ukraine in case of aggression against it. The talks almost reached an agreement, with both sides considering “far-reaching concessions,” but stopped in May 2022 due to several factors.