While trade between Russia and T\u00fcrkiye nearly doubled in 2022, but following Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, relations have since cooled, particularly in the oil, natural gas, and atomic energy sectors. Distrust has been fuelled by Turkish arms exports to Ukraine, the seizure of power by pro-Turkish rebels in Syria, Russia\u2019s declining influence in the South Caucasus, and a recalibration of Turkiye\u2019s role within NATO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mutual suspicion between Russia and T\u00fcrkiye is growing, and as a result T\u00fcrkiye is found to have been cozying to the United States, alongwith NATO while reducing its dependence on Russian energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
T\u00fcrkiye has been involved in several military incidents as part of the fighting in Ukraine. This 17th of November, Russia attacked a Turkish-flagged LNG tanker moored in Odesa; in August, Russian missiles struck a factory being built near Kyiv to produce Turkish Bayraktar drones; and in August 2023, Russia fired warning shots at the Turkish ship \u015e\u00fckr\u00fc Okan that was sailing under a Palau flag in the Black Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russia has repeatedly expressed its objection to T\u00fcrkiye supplying arms to Kyiv. T\u00fcrkiye, for its part as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine, is irritated by Russia\u2019s approach to peace negotiations, particularly its maximalist demands and the low-level delegation it sent to Istanbul talks. T\u00fcrkiye supports Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and backs Kyiv\u2019s aspirations to join NATO. T\u00fcrkiye also insists Russian President Vladimir Putin must meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, for peace talks to progress: something the Russia rejects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless, disagreements over Ukraine are only the tip of the iceberg. Despite repeated invitations, Putin has declined to visit T\u00fcrkiye in recent years, likely because of the outstanding international arrest warrants in his name, the fact that T\u00fcrkiye is a member of NATO, and a general mistrust of Turkiye\u2019s intentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In particular, mistrust has grown as calls grow for T\u00fcrkiye to take a bigger role in European security, with many European officials pushing for greater defence cooperation. Both Germany and the United Kingdom recently approved the long-stalled sale of Eurofighter Typhoon jets to T\u00fcrkiye, and, symbolically, the 2026 NATO summit will take place in T\u00fcrkiye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, the Russia is wary of warming ties between US and T\u00fcrkiye. Not only is Turkish President Recep Erdo\u011fan hoping for further U.S. investment to help the country\u2019s stuttering economy, he also wants U.S. assistance in the standoff with Syrian Kurds. Erdo\u011fan would like the United States to either help Syria integrate the Kurds into the country\u2019s new army\u2014or greenlight a Turkish military operation against them inside Syria. T\u00fcrkiye is not particularly interested in the Russia\u2019s opinion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such engagement with the United States means it\u2019s increasingly difficult for T\u00fcrkiye to resist pressure to comply with Western sanctions against Russia. In other words, T\u00fcrkiye is increasingly opting for US instead of Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under former U.S. President Joe Biden, T\u00fcrkiye blocked the Russian payment system Mir, stopped sanctioned EU goods reaching Russia, and Turkish banks halted financial transactions with their Russian counterparts. Now Biden\u2019s successor, Donald Trump, is demanding that T\u00fcrkiye wean itself off of Russian oil. As a result, Russian oil exports to T\u00fcrkiye fell more than 60% in October to 26,000 tons a day. In the week beginning November 03, they stopped altogether. October also saw volumes of Russian diesel bound for Turkish ports drop by 19%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russian natural gas exports have also declined. Over the last four years, Russia\u2019s share of the Turkish natural gas market has shrunk from 45% to 36%. Increasingly, T\u00fcrkiye is replacing Russian gas with LNG. In 2024, LNG met 31% of Turkiye\u2019s gas needs, rising to 44% in the first quarter of 2025. In September, T\u00fcrkiye signed a $43 billion contract with U.S. company Mercuria to supply LNG over twenty years, which will obviously help further reduce Russian imports. Finally, T\u00fcrkiye is seeking to boost domestic gas production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s unsurprising, therefore, that negotiations between Russia and T\u00fcrkiye over creating a gas hub in T\u00fcrkiye appear to have collapsed. Russia\u2019s state gas giant Gazprom has reportedly given up on this idea, which was first proposed by Putin in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russia-T\u00fcrkiye atomic energy ties are also on the rocks. Turkiye\u2019s Akkuyu nuclear power plant, which is being built by the Russian nuclear power company Rosatom, was due to be launched last year, but that still hasn\u2019t happened. It\u2019s currently being held up by the refusal of German company Siemens to supply turbines due to sanctions against Russia, but Turkish media have also reported that Rosatom failed to provide planned financing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, T\u00fcrkiye is negotiating with the United States over nuclear power cooperation. It\u2019s possible that T\u00fcrkiye could hire a U.S. company to build the country\u2019s second nuclear power plant, even though Rosatom said in 2024 that Erdo\u011fan had offered it the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By courting Trump, Erdo\u011fan is not only hoping for more U.S. investment and a new U.S. policy on Syria\u2019s Kurds. He is also hoping T\u00fcrkiye will once again be involved in the production of the F-35 fighter (it was put out of the program in 2019 after buying Russia\u2019s S-400 anti-aircraft system). While the Turkish military continues to operate S-400s, they appear to be of little practical use\u2014if for no other reason than because they are incompatible with NATO standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Developments in other parts of the world have also fuelled tensions. In the Middle East, it was the fall of the Russia-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the seizure of power by rebels supported by T\u00fcrkiye. In the South Caucasus, Trump\u2019s involvement in a joint peace declaration by Armenia and Azerbaijan strengthened the position of both US and T\u00fcrkiye at the cost of Russia\u2019s influence there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russia-T\u00fcrkiye cooperation has weakened so significantly over the last three years because of Russia\u2019s enormous expenditure of resources on the war in Ukraine, Turkiye\u2019s drift toward US, an end to the so-called Astana Format (made up of Russia, T\u00fcrkiye, and Iran) set up to address the fighting in Syria, and the diversification of Turkiye\u2019s foreign trade. The annual trade turnover between Russia and T\u00fcrkiye increased 90% in 2022 to $65 billion. By 2024, it had fallen to $52.6 billion, and China had replaced Russia as Turkiye\u2019s main source of imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, Russia and T\u00fcrkiye still have a significant economic relationship, from atomic energy to oil and gas. It would therefore be impossible for them to fully break with one another overnight, even if they wanted to. It\u2019s the same when it comes to international affairs, where Russian and Turkish interests are entangled in the South Caucasus, Syria, and Libya. But the scale of their bilateral ties is shrinking, and fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Team Maverick<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While trade between Russia and T\u00fcrkiye nearly doubled in 2022, but following Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, relations have since cooled, particularly in the oil, natural gas, and atomic energy sectors. Distrust has been fuelled by Turkish arms exports to Ukraine, the seizure of power by pro-Turkish rebels in Syria, Russia\u2019s declining influence in the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":86488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[81],"post_format":[],"flags":[],"class_list":["post-86487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86489,"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86487\/revisions\/86489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/86488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86487"},{"taxonomy":"post_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fpost_format&post=86487"},{"taxonomy":"flags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mavericknews30.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fflags&post=86487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}