Turkish, Russian leaders to meet ‘soon’ for grain deal: Ankara

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet soon to discuss the resumption of the grain deal, both Ankara and Moscow have confirmed, as well as efforts to end the Russian-Ukrainian war that has been continuing since February 2022.

Ömer Çelik, the spokesman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has announced that Erdoğan is planning to go to Russia’s resort city of Sochi very soon to meet Russian President Putin. Çelik said the two sides are working on fixing a date for the meeting.

Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman of Kremlin, told reporters in Moscow that a meeting between the two men was being prepared intensively.

The diplomatic sources believe that Erdoğan-Putin meeting will take place before the G20 Summit slated to happen in India on Sept. 9 and 10.

Çelik said Türkiye’s main objective was to avoid a global food crisis and therefore Erdoğan’s visit to Sochi will focus on finding a formula for the resumption of the grain deal. Russia canceled the grain deal on July 17 as it could not export its grain, fertilizers and other products due to the secondary sanctions on shipment, banking and insurance.

As a result of the efforts by Türkiye and the United Nations, an agreement for the transportation of Russian and Ukrainian grain was reached in July 2022 and more than 33 million tons of wheat, corn and other food products were shipped to the global markets and the needy countries.

In a recent statement Erdoğan had informed that Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan would pay a visit to Moscow before his meeting with Putin. Fidan was in Ukraine last week and held talks with President Volodomyr Zelensky, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba and other authorities.

Ukraine has been seeking alternative routes for transporting its products to the world markets, but Ankara thinks the best way is to resume the export through the Turkish straits and include Russia. Any formula that denies Russia will risk failure, according to Ankara.

Russian Foreign Ministry also confirmed a potential visit of Fidan to Moscow but no date has been announced.

Bilateral issues will also be discussed

An Erdoğan-Putin meeting is expected to address a number of bilateral issues and other regional conflicts, especially the developments in South Caucasus and Syria.

Ankara and Moscow have deep bilateral connections as Türkiye is highly dependent to Russian natural gas. In addition, Russia is building Türkiye’s first nuclear energy plant, and the two countries continue to expand this cooperation.

The trade between the two countries increased after the Western countries imposed sanctions on Russia. The two countries were seeking ways to increase the trade in their own currencies, including the gas payment.