Turkey was already at the very beginning of the Special Military Operation the only country to host peace talks, apart from a brief attempt at a meeting in Belarus, and, moreover, the only state that was able to bring the two countries together around a common table, providing a platform on which the parties as a whole were able to agree on the terms of peace. Therefore, for Turkey, holding talks is nothing new.
For the Republic of Turkey, this meeting and the final peace talks that are to follow it are vital for a number of fundamental reasons. First, Turkey has long been the most important neighbour and the most important trade and economic partner of both countries, Russia and Ukraine, in the shared Black Sea basin. At least since the time of the Soviet Union, Turkey has had and has had multidimensional and deep social, cultural, humanitarian and other types of relations and interests with both countries at the highest level. Even if we consider only the ‘Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organisation’, of which both Ukraine, the Russian Federation and Turkey were members, Turkey, on the basis of the numerous regional common pacts, organisations and platforms of which it is a member and participant, has perhaps the highest degree of responsibility, necessity and at the same time the opportunity, incomparably more than any other Black Sea country, to bring the warring countries closer together and reconcile them as soon as possible.
It is no coincidence that President Putin personally called President Erdogan and asked that the ongoing indirect meetings between the sides be held in Istanbul in order to take direct and more concrete steps. The Russian leadership, represented by Vladimir Putin, knows and remembers very well that it was only thanks to the meeting and negotiation conditions provided by Turkey in March 2022, and its mediation role and mission in general, that both sides were able to agree on a path to peace at the very beginning of the war. This is why, over the past three-plus years, many Russian diplomats, politicians and officials, including in particular Russian President Vladimir Putin, have repeatedly referred to the ‘Istanbul Memorandum’ on various occasions and in various settings, recalled it and, moreover, pointed out that it would serve as a basis and precedent for possible new peace talks.
Of course, Turkey has many interests, expectations and benefits from the fact that the highest level representatives of Russia and Ukraine met in Istanbul and agreed on new peace terms. Previously, Turkey was one of the countries with the highest amount of investment, economic activity and foreign trade in both countries. Especially with Crimea, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Lugansk and Donetsk Republics, Turkey had more mutual economic and trade relations across the sea than any other Black Sea country. As a result of the war, Turkey suffered huge losses in its investment and commercial activities, mainly in Ukraine but also in Russia, totalling tens of billions of dollars.
