The Russia-Ukraine war in early 2022 confronted Türkiye with one of the most complex strategic tests in its modern history.

The war erupted at a moment when Ankara’s relationships with both Western partners and Russia were simultaneously vital and fraught.

The conflict threatened to sharpen every existing constraint at once. Energy prices surged, global financial conditions tightened, and Western sanctions on Russia placed Türkiye, a NATO member with deep economic, energy and tourism ties to Moscow, in an unenviable position. Maintaining strategic autonomy without alienating either side appeared, at the time, close to impossible.

Many assumed Ankara would be forced into a binary choice, one that would carry heavy economic and political costs whichever way it turned.

Four years on, that assumption has proved misplaced. Far from being boxed in by events, Türkiye has emerged as one of the more adept geopolitical navigators of the Ukraine war and its wider fallout, turning constraint into leverage and ambiguity into influence.

On the war in Ukraine, first through the Antalya peace talks, its role in the Black Sea grain deal, successive prisoner exchanges and again this year via the Istanbul peace process, Türkiye established itself as a useful go-between for the main protagonists.

This helped cut Türkiye some slack with both the West and Russia. It was thus able to continue trading with Russia, within the limitations of the Western sanctions regime, trade that helped anchor its own macroeconomic position.

Remarkably, in parallel, Türkiye was able to........

© TRT World