Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO membership is hardly high on the meeting’s agenda, says Tuomas Forsberg, director of the research collegium at the University of Helsinki.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin and Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet face-to-face on Tuesday in Tehran, Iran, a Kremlin statement said last week. The Iranian president will also participate in the meeting Ebrahim Raisi.
The meeting is only Putin’s second trip abroad since the country started its attack on Ukraine, says Le Monde (you switch to another service). Putin visited Tajikistan in June.
According to the Kremlin, the meeting will discuss the situation in Syria. Turkey, Russia and Iran have long participated in the Syrian civil war, where Russia and Iran have supported the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad regime, and Turkey in turn has supported some groups fighting against the regime and sought to suppress Kurdish groups in northern Syria.
The meeting of the president of NATO country Turkey with NATO’s main adversary Russia and the arch-enemy of the United States in the Middle East, Iran, arouses suspicion, especially in Washington, estimates the professor of international politics and the head of the research college of the University of Helsinki Tuomas Forsberg for STT.
– Yes, it certainly tightens the gaps, depending of course on what comes out of the meeting. Even the mere meeting is suspicious to many, and this applies to both Iran and Russia. The nature of the meeting may throw more water into the stale discussion about Turkey’s position in NATO. If Turkey trades in cows with the country named as the most significant threat to the alliance, then it is a big deal for the entire alliance, says Forsberg.
The talks in Tehran are officially part of the so-called Astana peace process, a project led by Russia, Iran and Turkey to end Syria’s more than decade-long civil war.
Finland and Sweden hardly high on the agenda
In Finland, a common source of suspicion and speculation has been that Turkey and Russia have agreed behind the scenes on some kind of cow trade, where Russia looks down on Turkey’s activities in Syria in exchange for the delay caused by Turkey in Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO membership process. Turkey has not yet ratified the membership of Finland and Sweden.
The researcher does not believe that Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO project will be the subject of the discussions in Tehran.
– You could imagine that they have much more important things to talk about than this issue of Finland. There has been no evidence that this (Finland and Sweden’s delay in membership) was something Russia and Turkey coaxed. It is not excluded, but there are more important topics on the agenda, says Forsberg.