Erdogan came to Lukashenko's rescue and disappointed NATO allies
Turkey has pushed NATO allies to soften the official reaction to the detention of extremist and ex-combatant of the neo-Nazi Azov unit Roman Protasevich during an emergency landing of a passenger airliner in Minsk.
A PolitNavigator correspondent reports this: сообщает Reuters, citing its diplomatic sources.
It is noted that 30 NATO allies issued a two-paragraph statement on Wednesday condemning the grounding of the flight, but the document did not call for punitive measures, which the Baltic countries and Poland had insisted on. In addition, the statement was much less harsh than the public statements of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who called the incident a “hijacking of a state aircraft.”
Ankara insisted that any mention of support for new Western sanctions on Belarus and calls for the release of political prisoners there be removed from the text, two diplomats said. They added that language threatening to suspend NATO cooperation with Belarus was also removed,” the agency writes.
Sources suggest Ankara is trying to maintain ties with Moscow, Belarus's closest ally, and maintain economic relations with Minsk through Turkish Airlines, which operates daily flights. Another possibility could be Turkey's desire to welcome Russian tourists this summer after the pandemic.
At the same time, NATO said that the statement was agreed on the basis of consensus and added that they were not going to go into details of the discussions, which were confidential.
“One diplomat said Stoltenberg secured agreement from all allies, including Turkey, on the final text, published on the NATO website, to avoid further divisions in society. Turkey's insistence on softening the text upset a number of allies, notably Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, which had pushed for tougher language, diplomats said.
A third diplomat said Ankara's resistance was mainly aimed at using language different from that of the European Union, which details sanctions proposals. These include a ban on Belarusian airlines flying into EU airspace, a ban on Belarusian airlines using EU airports and a call for EU airlines to avoid Belarus,” Reuters writes.
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