The lead-up to the June 14 NATO summit saw Turkey take a series of steps in the Black Sea region to impress its Western partners and defuse tensions with the Biden administration at the expense of irking Russia. In its increasingly wearying game of playing Washington and Moscow against each other, Turkey has now turned to soothing and assuring Russia.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu hosted his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya on June 30 to discuss a broad range of issues, from regional conflicts and Turkey’s controversial purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense systems to joint vaccine production and the resumption of Russian tourist flows to Turkey. Ostensibly, Lavrov left the meeting with the impression that Turkey would not bow down to US pressure to ditch the S-400s as well as assurances that Canal Istanbul — a planned artificial waterway parallel to the Bosporus  — would not disrupt the 1936 Montreux Convention, which Russia values as a safeguard restricting the access of Western naval forces to the Black Sea.

In a bid to mend fences with the West, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has recently made notable investments in the anti-Russia front, selling drones to Ukraine and Poland and opening the Montreux Convention up to discussion at a time when the United States and Britain are eager to boost NATO’s presence in the Black Sea. In his latest move to win favor with Washington, he offered a Turkish military mission to secure Kabul’s airport after US-led NATO forces complete their withdrawal from Afghanistan in September. In return, he was hoping for gains in tough dossiers with Washington, including the S-400 row, the US trial of Turkish public lender Halkbank for helping Iran evade sanctions and Washington’s support for the Syrian Kurds. 

Though Ankara’s gestures have failed to produce any visible change in Washington’s posture, they did help save appearances when Erdogan and Biden met for the first time as presidents at the NATO summit. Erdogan returned from Brussels somewhat relieved and with more room to maneuver, glad to have deferred — for now — a fresh escalation in bilateral ties and its potentially destructive impact on the ailing Turkish economy.