President Putin’s Visit to Turkey
Russian President, Vladimir Putin’s today’s visit to Turkey is important by all calculations. The visit comes after some delay due to some reasons; among which stands the reckless Turkish move last October to fore a Syrian civilian Plane coming from Moscow to Damascus to land in Turkey. The Turkish unlawful piracy against the plane, not to mention Turkey’s disappointment once nothing illegal was found on board. The Government of Erdogan, however, confiscated the legally-bound-to Syria martial on board.
President Putin is expected to touch upon this issue, which made him earlier postpone his visit to Turkey, according to press leaks. Russia and Syria pertain the right to get back the materials confiscated. Another point of further discussion would be -as expected- the Turkish demand to install NATO patriots on its borders with Syria, given the short distance separating Turkey from Russia, 1752.2 kilometers. Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that deployment of Patriot missiles on the Turkish territories will increase the risk of instability in the Middle East in the future and would “will ignite armed conflicts in the region”. Russia does consider the “Militarization of the Syrian-Turkish border” as an “alarming signal” The Russian Foreign Minister earlier proposal for the establishment of a direct line of communication between Ankara and Damascus with the aim of avoiding incidents between the neighbors is expected to be raised during the visit.
Hopefully, the Russian-Turkish summit meeting would create the ground for a more balanced and reasonable stance by the Government of Mr. Erdogan, away from the US and petrodollar dictations. The Russian side is expected to reiterate the need for a Turkish role in helping to bring the militant opposition to the right path of dialogue and peaceful end to crisis. Hopefully, Erdogan’s Government is to decrease its logistic, economic, and military backing to al-Qaeda and Moslem Brotherhood terrorists. If so, all the interested would be satisfied economically, politically and commercially.
Dr. Mohammad Abdo Al-Ibrahim