Russian President Vladimir Putin (C-L) and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C-R) enter a hall to start their meeting with Russian and Turkish entrepreneurs in Konstantinovsky Palace outside Saint Petersburg on August 9, 2016 [© AFP 2017/ ALEXANDER NEMENOV]
Ahead of the upcoming meeting between Presidents Putin and Erdogan, which is set to start later on Friday in Moscow, political analysts from both countries have indicated certain hidden hazards which might hinder the negotiations.
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Earlier on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that President Putin, among others, plans to discuss the conflict settlement process in Syria and Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov’s assassination in talks with Erdogan.
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Araik Stepanyan, executive secretary of the Presidium of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems has pointed at the noticeable changes which have happened at the international arena since the last meeting of the two leaders.
The Syrian government army with the aerial support of the Russian Aerospace Forces has been besetting the Islamists on all fronts. Trump has been shaping a new foreign policy tideway bypassing Turkey. EU officials have been openly criticizing Erdogan while political tensions have only intensified in Turkey. Thus Erdogan has accumulated a whole set of problems and all the above will have an inevitable impact on the negotiations in Moscow.
“Turkey is in quite a difficult situation right now: its foreign policy has turned out a real failure – the relationships with the EU and the US have greatly deteriorated. The relationships with its neighbors, Greece and Armenia are nothing better. The internal conflicts are arising one after another,” Stepanyan told RT channel.
Thus, he said, Turkey will be forced to make concessions to Russia. If Erdogan starts confronting Moscow it will “bury Turkey”, he added.
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Meanwhile, Alexey Arbatov, the head of the Center for International Security at the Institute of Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations pointed to Sputnik at another hidden hazard in the upcoming talks.
“It is not easy to talk about the expectations from the upcoming negotiations but we might suggest that Bashar Assad might also become a key topic of the talks. The attitude towards the Syrian president is the major factor which splits Turkey and Russia,” he told Sputnik.
And it is one of the key factors which hampers the peace talks in Astana, he added. While Turkey keeps treating the Syrian leader as an adversary, it has not yet defined its position towards the future peace process, and namely will Assad have any chance to remain the head of the Syrian state or be part of the coalition government, he told Sputnik.
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Araik Stepanyan however pointed out at yet another hidden hazard here.
“One of the main issue to Russia is how sincere Erdogan is with regards to Russia. There are concerns that if the Americans go gently with Turkey, the Turks will then divert their policies towards the West,” he finally said.
Full article: ‘If Erdogan Starts Confronting Moscow It Will Bury Turkey’ (Sputnik News)
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