Erdogan under pressure over threat to Tatars in Ukraine

Turkey is increasingly caught between a rock and a hard place as the crisis to its north in Ukraine threatens to slide toward civil war, and the actual civil war to its south in Syria moves in a direction it never expected, with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gradually reconsolidating his position militarily. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s warning in a Bloomberg interview that Ukraine is sliding into civil war has heightened concerns in Ankara.

Turkey, already suffering negative fallout from the Syrian conflict, is bracing itself for the possibility of another, similar conflict near its borders that is bound to have negative political, social and economic consequences. Ankara has been trying to sustain a delicate balance between Moscow and Kiev since the Crimean crisis broke in March, but it is aware that the balance might tip if events in eastern Ukraine get further out of hand and turn into a Yugoslavia-type bloody conflict.

Despite this balancing act, Turkey continues to support Ukraine’s territorial integrity and has refused to recognize the results of the referendum held in Crimea in March that enabled Moscow to wrest control of the peninsula from Kiev. Ankara has similarly refused to recognize the results of the referendum held in eastern Ukraine by separatist Russians on May 11. “The illegal referendum held in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk on 11 May 2014 and its possible outcomes are null and void and are not recognized by Turkey,” read a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry.

Ankara also continues to express concern over the fate of Crimean Tatars, a Turkic group that has historically had bad relations with Russia and Russians. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the matter with Vladimir Putin in a phone conversation in April, reportedly telling the Russian president that “Turkey attaches great importance to the Tatars’ well-being and security.”