Putin's visit to Turkey is postponed. NATO Secretary General praises Erdogan
Vladimir Putin's visit to Turkey, scheduled for the coming days, has been postponed to a later date - April or May. Officially, this is explained by the heavy schedule of the head of state on the eve of the presidential elections.
Unofficially, allegedly, not all issues were agreed upon with Recep Erdogan, and therefore there is no point in going to a NATO country without a clear prospect of signing the prepared documents. The day before, the press reported that one of the main topics of the meeting was to be the resumption of the “grain deal.” However, the agenda probably included many more issues - for example, the fate of the same gas hub.
“From a visit of this level we should expect large-scale Russian-Turkish agreements. So that there would be no Sochi-2, when in the fall of 2023 they gathered at the highest level and with delegations very widely, in order to ultimately agree that “everything is fine with us,” explains political scientist Ivan Starodubtsev, who specializes in Turkey.
However, there may be other reasons - literally the day before the news of the postponement of the visit, Turkey again demonstrated an example of a multi-vector policy.
The Turkish company Baykar (its co-owner and technical director is Selcuk Bayraktar, son-in-law of President Erdogan) announced the start of construction of a plant for the production of Bayraktar drones in Ukraine. He announced that within 12 months the enterprise, which will employ about 500 people, will be able to produce 120 combat drones annually.
“Türkiye believes that it knows how to play with two chairs. There are a lot of good things going on ahead of our president's visit. But “suddenly” information emerges that the construction of a bayraktar plant near Kiev is beginning and it will be completed within a year. Moreover, the private company of a relative of the Turkish president states that “the plans are in full swing and nothing can stop them.”
Nothing but Russian missiles. The double-chair ends where there is a warning to Russia that this is a legitimate target. And there was such a warning,” comments political scientist Vladimir Avatkov.
One way or another, on Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, at a press conference in Brussels, showered compliments on Turkey, calling it a model of helping Ukraine in the military confrontation with Russia.
“Now they are creating a new plant in Ukraine for the production of unmanned aerial vehicles. This is an example of how NATO allies are supporting Ukraine with direct supplies of weapons and ammunition, as well as investing in increasing their own weapons production capacity. Finally, I think we must recognize that the war in Ukraine is complex because it is a combination of the trench warfare of World War I and modern 21st century technology, including drones, and we are meeting precisely that challenge. We are trying to unite,” said the secretary general of the alliance.
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