How Erdoğan’s trip to see Putin signals he’s still playing middleman

Good morning. Today, our Russia correspondents report on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s move to thumb his nose at the west with a productive visit to Russia, and our parliament correspondent details how the enlarged far-right contingent in the European parliament is already throwing its weight around.

The Sultan and the Tsar

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrived in Kazan yesterday for a meeting with Vladimir Putin, in which the Turkish leader flaunted his easy camaraderie with his Russian host — and reminded his western allies of his power as a go-between, write Charles Clover and Daria Mosolova.

Context: Russia and Turkey have historical ties and Erdoğan has sought to stay close to Putin in recent years despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, walking a diplomatic tightrope that takes into account Ankara’s membership of Nato and its similarly close links with Kyiv.

Erdoğan was greeted upon arrival with a taste of chak-chak, a traditional fried dough from Tatarstan, the heart of Russia’s Turkic cultural past, ahead of a 55-minute meeting with the Russian leader.

Erdoğan was the only Nato member among the 24 national leaders in Kazan to attend a summit of the Brics group. That represents a genuine diplomatic coup for Putin, and was conspicuous if not surprising for Erdoğan, who frequently chafes against his western allies by acting as a would-be middleman for Moscow.

Their bilateral meeting was overshadowed by a terrorist attack in Ankara earlier in the day, which killed five and wounded 22.

Erdoğan voiced a desire for Turkey to join Brics and also invited Putin to visit Ankara, a high stakes move if it went ahead given Turkey’s Nato membership and proximity to Europe.

Putin stayed away from last year’s Brics summit after South Africa warned him it would have to comply with an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (of which Turkey is not a member).

Putin said being a Nato member should not prevent Turkey from joining the Brics, and clearly being a Nato member has not prevented Turkey from doing a number of things with Russia — such as maintaining good relations throughout the Ukraine invasion, while also selling Bayraktar combat drones to Ukraine.

While the two backed opposing sides in civil wars in Syria and Libya, they have typically found economic reasons to maintain warm relations: Russia struck a deal to sell cheap gas to Turkey in 2023, giving the country a key economic lifeline ahead of Erdogan’s most recent re-election.

But there are other signs that Ankara knows it needs to play both sides.

This week the FT reported that Turkey has secretly barred exports to Russia of US military-linked hardware after Washington warned Ankara of “consequences” if it did not halt the trade. Ankara has in recent weeks adjusted its customs systems to block exports of more than four dozen categories of goods of US origin.

Chart du jour: A punt on Pyongyang

Vladimir Putin is betting on North Korean troops to retake Kursk from Ukraine, with Pyongyang’s “Storm Corps” becoming the first foreign army contingent deployed in Russia’s war.

Budget bust-up

The populist right which surged in June’s European elections is beginning to flex its muscles in parliament, with a shock vote against a resolution on the EU’s 2025 budget, writes Andy Bounds.

Context: MEPs did agree on a budget proposal. But a bewildering set of votes on an accompanying political resolution saw a far-right amendment to allow EU money to build border infrastructure pass before those who proposed it rejected the overall resolution.

Parliament has three hard-right groups. With increasing extremism, they are the ECR, home to the party of Italian premier Giorgia Meloni; the Patriots, dominated by Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National of France, and the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) which includes the Alternative for Germany.

ESN put forward the amendment on funding border walls to keep out migrants and the Patriots, ECR and the centre-right European People’s party backed it. Migration has surged up the agenda in recent weeks to become one of the bloc’s most politicised issues.

Though the European Commission allows spending on watchtowers, cameras and similar infrastructure, it has consistently said walls could breach its legal restrictions on human rights grounds. 

This led outraged liberal and leftwing groups to reject the resolution. Fabienne Keller, of the liberal Renew group, said she “deplored” the EPP’s alliance with the far right”.

“The parliament is becoming ungovernable,” said one centrist party official. 

Three weeks of talks with the council of the EU’s 27 member states will now begin, as the parliament fights to restore €1.5bn of funding cuts before a final vote in November.

What to watch today

1. European parliament president Roberta Metsola visits Italy, meets Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

2. Slovakia’s President Peter Pellegrini visits Germany, meets Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

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