Turkey has offered to mediate in the Ukraine crisis as tensions between NATO and Russia escalate, with fears that Russia might be gearing up to invade eastern Ukraine. The proposal from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has previously passed messages between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, seems to have generated little enthusiasm in Moscow and Kyiv.
Turkey has followed an inconsistent policy in the NATO-Russia row fueled by the Ukraine crisis. On one hand, it has irked Moscow by supplying Bayraktar TB2 armed drones to Kyiv and rejecting Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Also, it has fervently backed NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia even as Russian President Vladimir Putin sees NATO’s expansion toward Russian borders as a red line.
