Valdai Club

As rockets shatter the fragile peace in the Middle East and nations pick sides, Dr. Hasan Selim Özertem dissects the precarious dance of Turkish foreign policy amidst a new deadly flare-up in the Israel-Hamas conflict. An incident at al-Ahli ignites a stark transformation in Ankara’s diplomatic voice, revealing the deep undercurrents of ideology and domestic politics that could reconfigure regional alliances and reshape Turkey’s geopolitical path.

The prevailing narrative from Russia indicates a preference for tangible actions over suggested alternatives as a condition for re-engaging in the grain deal. In this equation, Turkey and the UN Secretary-General emerge as potential mediators to persuade Russia. However, such diplomacy must be part of a broader, collaborative initiative.

The process of Sweden and Finland acceding to NATO membership is not over yet. But recent developments show that a delay is inevitable due to tense relations between Turkey and Sweden, writes Hasan Selim Özertem, Ankara-based political analyst.

As the spirit of the Cold War haunts current global politics with the spiraling down crisis, Turkey’s position represents a unique case. From the beginning, Turkey pursued a balanced strategy and kept its dialogue channels open both with Moscow and Kiev.

The COVID 19 pandemic reshuffled economic balances in the world. Forced to go lockdowns, developed countries chose to pump money into the system to avoid massive layoffs. This strategy worked somehow and mitigated the pandemic’s impact. After shrinking by 3.4 percent, the markets recovered in 2021

In 2011 President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan unveiled his “crazy project”, Canal İstanbul. It is a new passageway to the Black Sea in parallel to the Bosphorus. Beyond its economic and ecological implications, some groups claim that the canal has a potential to undermine the Montreux regime. This makes the project a political phenomenon.

The success of Turkish-Russian cooperation in the peacekeeping mission in Karabakh, along with their political engagement with Armenia and Azerbaijan matters a lot, if the goal of bringing peace and prosperity to the region is to be reached in the future, writes Valdai Club expert Hasan Selim Özertem.

The operation of the Turkish troops looks as a result of chains of agreements, which included all players in the region.

More than six months later, Turkey finally apologized to Russia for the plane shot down in November 2015, and the dead pilot. There is a view that the apologies were a bit late, but according to Valdai Club contributor, Head of the Center for Energy Security Studies at the International Strategic Research Organization (USAK) in Ankara, Hasan Selim Ozertem, for Turkey, which is going through a transitional period, this step toward improving relations with Russia was very timely.