President of the Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has told United States of America’s President Joe Biden that it was important for Ankara to maintain dialogue with both Ukraine and Russia, in order to prevent the conflict from worsening.
Erdogan made this clear to US President Biden in a telephone conversation on Thursday.
He also said that Turkey’s facilitator role in trying to find a solution to the crisis was important, according to a statement from his office.
The NATO member Turkey, which shares a maritime border with Russia and Ukraine on the Black Sea side, has good relations with both countries.
Although Turkey has called Russia’s invasion unacceptable, it has insustently opposed sanctions against Moscow.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytry Kuleba met in Turkey’s southern Antalya province, on Thursday, under Ankara’s auspices.
But the highest-level contact between the two sides since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine made no apparent progress towards a ceasefire.
It also did not reach a solution for a humanitarian corridor from the southern Ukrainian port of Mariupol.
In the call with Biden, Erdogan said arranging the meeting between Lavrov and Kuleba was in itself a diplomatic victory.
Both Kuleba and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who hosted the talks, said it was not an easy meeting.
Russia has no intention of joining sanctions against Russia
Turkey, on Tuesday March 1, 2022 in a report by Daily Sabah, had said it had no intention of joining international sanctions against Russia over its war with Ukraine, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.
“As a principle, we didn’t participate in such sanctions in a general sense. We have no intention of joining in these sanctions, either,” he said on Turkish TV news channel Haberturk.
Since Russia’s war on Ukraine began Thursday February 24, it has been met by outrage from the international community, with the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States implementing a range of economic sanctions on Russia. Many Western countries are also supplying Ukraine with weapons, have shut their airspace for Russian airlines, and banned or restricted Russian state-run media, not all of these, however, have been able to partake in the US oil ban it said it did to punish Moscow.
Touching on the Montreux Convention, a 1936 accord on the governing of the Turkish Straits, Cavusoglu said Ankara had sent official notifications about its position on the matter to the countries involved in the war and clarified issues with regards to the implementation of the Montreux Convention.
He added that Russia had accepted when Turkey asked Russia to withdraw its request for warships not registered in its Black Sea fleet to pass through the Straits.
“Russia has said four of its ships would cross the straits on Feb 27-28, three of which are not registered to bases in the Black Sea,” Cavusoglu said, adding that, “We told Russia not to send these ships and Russia said the vessels would not cross the straits.”
“Nobody should be offended by this, because the Montreux Convention is valid today, yesterday and tomorrow, so we will implement it,” he said.
Reuters also had reported that at least four Russian ships – two destroyers, a frigate, and an intelligence vessel – were waiting on Turkey’s decision to cross from the Mediterranean. Two of them, a frigate and a destroyer, had asked to make the journey this week.
These reports came when the Russia-Ukraine war was in its sixth day and with that, the provisions of the 1936 pact – which controls access to the Black Sea, including coastal countries like Ukraine – had come into the international spotlight.
Cavusoglu mentioned in particular that Articles 19 of the convention would be implemented. The convention gives Turkey the authority to ban warships from the straits during times of war. Russian warships returning to their home port are exempt from the restrictions, according to the articles of the convention.
The United States “expressed appreciation” for Turkey’s move to close the straits. Ukraine’s ambassador to Ankara said Kyiv was “grateful” to Turkey for “meticulously” implementing the pact.
“We don’t have to take sides in war; on the contrary, we are a country that can establish an equal dialogue with both sides to end it. We can’t afford to take sides,” Çavuşoğlu also said.
Turkey had called on all sides in the Ukraine crisis to respect the international pact on passage through the Turkish straits to the Black Sea, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said after Ankara had closed the access.
“Eroding Montreux or disrupting the status quo in any way is to nobody’s benefit. We see a benefit in preserving Montreux. We tell all sides that it would be beneficial to abide by Montreux,” Akar told reporters, his ministry said.
Source Sabah dailysabah.com
