From the Council of Europe these days in Turin to the bilateral with Erdogan: on 5 July in Ankara Rome tries to mediate the no to NATO entries of Finland and Sweden and aims at Israel’s gas
Duand months ago, exactly on March 16, in the midst of the ferocity of Vladimir Putin’s bombs, the Council of Europe decided to expel Moscow from its members. And so, today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov will not sit next to his colleagues in Turin on the day that will conclude the semester of Italian presidency of the organization created for the defense of human rights four years after the end of the Second World War.
For Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio it is the perfect opportunity to illustrate the all-Italian idea of a path leading to peace in Ukraine, contained in a document delivered in New York to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. This is a plan which, according to the Foreign Ministry, will have to leverage the collaboration of a strategic NATO partner such as Turkey.
Mario Draghi will be in Ankara on 5 July for a bilateral meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For weeks, diplomats have been working on finding the most suitable day. And in the choice, the weight of the calendar is not secondary: the summit, in fact, will be held five days after the conclusion of the NATO summit in Madrid. It is very likely that we will still be in the midst of the conflict in Ukraine and that the hopes for a truce or a more lasting peace will be at the heart of the confrontation between two members of the Atlantic Alliance, protagonists in the Mediterranean, with different interests in common and someone at odds. .
It is the third time that Draghi and Erdogan will see each other in person. The first, amidst embarrassment and frost, was in Italy, at the G20 in October, exactly six months after the prime minister defined the Turkish president as a “dictator” whom “but we need”. The war in Ukraine showed the former president of the European Central Bank how well founded the second part of his statement was. The announcement of the July summit was given yesterday by Draghi during the briefing in the Chamber, in the Senate: “he is the first in ten years now – explained the premier -. We will discuss the diplomatic and negotiating perspectives of the conflict, and of the strengthening of relations between Italy and Turkey ”.
The war in Ukraine has given Erdogan a role in the front row: the Turkish is the only NATO leader who deals with Putin, who has put Russians and Ukrainians around the same table (due to a failed negotiation), who has not joined the sanctions against the Kremlin, which threatens the veto for the entry of Finland and Sweden into the Atlantic Alliance, and which does not intend to act as a mere spectator while others share the cake of the great energy match after the gradual farewell to Moscow gas. In general, the right of interdiction serves Erdogan to settle more than one open account with Western partners.
Weeks of contacts, phone calls and face-to-face talks between foreign ministers Di Maio and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu served to build mutual trust between the two countries. For this reason, diplomatic sources explain, the Italian government has already received assurances that in the end Turkey will not get in the way of the accession of Helsinki and Stockholm. Erdogan wants to negotiate, that’s what Di Maio explained to Draghi. And he wants to negotiate on two points: he asks the Scandinavians to hand over the Kurds of the PKK that Ankara considers terrorists, and to lift the embargo on the sale of arms still in force in Sweden and Finland. Just to make it clear that he is serious, after having said he had nothing against the request for entry into NATO by the two Nordics, yesterday the Turkish president filtered out the following outburst: “It is unacceptable that those who support terrorist organizations enter it” . Erdogan could have every interest in slowing down the accession times and lengthening the transition period in which Sweden and Finland would remain exposed to Putin’s possible retaliation, because they were discovered by the umbrella provided for by article 5 of the treaty, the one that requires relief common among member countries.
To date, Erdogan’s hopes of organizing a peace conference have been wrecked under the flood of Russian missiles against Ukrainian civilians. The time is not ripe and according to the Italian government they will not be until Europe and the United States also participate actively.The Italian diplomats who are working to prepare the bilateral are quite clear what Turkey wants in return. and what Italy could get out of it too. The Italian, American and Turkish Sherpas discuss military orders (especially fighters) and the guarantees in matters of strategic security required by Erdogan. Draghi’s mediation at the July table could yield possible new opportunities for energy supply for Italy. In fact, it is very likely that there will be talk of the new project of an underwater gas pipeline between Turkey and the largest Israeli offshore field, the Leviathan. Tel Aviv, in collaboration with Egypt and the European Union, aims to increase the flow of gas to Italy and Europe. The plans to multiply supplies are based on several possibilities, complicated however by the difficult balances in the Mediterranean. The project with Israel is pampered by Erdogan because it is an alternative to the EastMed corridor, which cuts Turkey out of triangulations in the Mediterranean, because it carries the pipes from Cyprus directly to the Greek and then Italian coasts, depriving Ankara of its ability to influence. It is not unthinkable that, among the many issues to be discussed, Erdogan will also address this with the premier of a country desperate for gas.
Unlimited access to all site content
€ 1 / month for 3 months, then € 3.99 / month for 3 months
Unlock unlimited access to all content on the site
#Italy #field #truce