Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Aug. 5 meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin appears to have turned a page in Ankara’s chilly ties with Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Muslim-majority Chechen Republic and a Putin loyalist. Turkey’s foreign minister and intelligence chief, who accompanied Erdogan in Sochi, huddled with Kadyrov on the sidelines of the summit, and it was the Chechen leader who made the meeting public on Telegram.
Kadyrov has long been associated with espionage claims and a series of murders of Chechen dissidents in Turkey. That senior Turkish officials were willing to meet him not long after he publicly berated Erdogan portends a political shift on Ankara’s part — a diplomatic feat that could be chalked up not to Kadyrov, but rather his boss. Putin had so far refrained from taking the Chechen leader to his meetings with Erdogan, even though he would often have him in his entourage when meeting with other Muslim leaders.