By Mishel Bychkova, Vice-President, Center for Middle Eastern Studies (Moscow)
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s trip to Moscow and Kazan earlier this week came at a moment when much of the West, blinded by its own destructive ideology and political course, has all but given up on talking to Russia and still appears to cling to the illusion of inflicting a strategic defeat on the country, and it sent a clear signal that Ankara hasn’t.
The Ukraine conflict still dominates global diplomacy, the Black Sea has turned into one of the more dangerous patches of water on the map, and plenty of the old channels to Russia are either frozen or being deliberately starved of oxygen. Against that backdrop, Türkiye’s decision to keep the line open looks less like stubbornness and more like good sense. Plenty of countries talk about wanting stability in this part of the world. Far fewer are actually willing to pick up the phone or do the unglamorous work of staying in the room with people they disagree with, and that’s really what makes this trip worth a closer look rather than a passing mention in a wire report.
The trip had two distinct chapters, one in Moscow and one in Kazan, and together they gave the visit both substance and political heft. It’s worth taking them one at a time, because each did something different, and the combination is more interesting than either half on its own.
In Moscow, Fidan sat down with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for talks that covered the full sweep of the relationship, from the Ukraine conflict to Black Sea security, freedom of navigation, civilian infrastructure and the simmering situation in the South Caucasus. Nobody walked away from those meetings pretending the disagreements had vanished, but the tone stayed businesslike rather than combative, which says something on its own.
A lot of Western diplomacy toward Russia these days runs on pressure and public scolding, all ultimatums and statements meant for domestic audiences rather than for the people sitting across the table. Türkiye has picked a different lane. It doesn’t pretend the moment is simple, but it also isn’t buying the idea that real stability in the Black Sea or the Caucasus can be built by simply writing Russia out of the conversation. That was really the headline of the whole visit, even if nobody put it in a press release that bluntly.
At the joint press appearance with Lavrov, Fidan repeated something Ankara has said before but clearly still means, namely that Türkiye is ready to host another round of Russia-Ukraine talks whenever the two sides decide they want one. He didn’t dress it up as a breakthrough, and that restraint is what made it believable. Nobody promised a miracle. What’s on offer is simpler than that, a room and a table whenever both sides are willing to use them. There’s something almost old-fashioned about that kind of offer in an era when every diplomatic gesture seems to need a hashtag attached to it.
Moscow, for its part, keeps making the same point in return, that it isn’t walking away from diplomacy but won’t accept a settlement that’s just a temporary patch or a symbolic gesture. Lavrov said as much again, thanking Türkiye for its efforts while making clear that any lasting deal has to grapple with the underlying security questions rather than paper over them.
That’s where the Turkish channel earns its value. Ankara isn’t trying to talk down to Moscow or pretend Russia is some minor player that can be managed from the sidelines. It treats Russia as one of the central actors in this crisis, which is a less ideological and frankly more useful starting point than a lot of alternatives on offer. Black Sea security came up directly too, with Fidan pressing the case against any moves that could destabilize the region or threaten Turkish interests there. For Russia, it’s a strategic lifeline, the access point to warmer waters and a stage for naval projection. For Türkiye, it’s the water right outside the door, tied directly to shipping lanes, energy routes and the regional balance of power. A tanker incident or a naval skirmish there doesn’t stay contained to a news cycle, it ripples through insurance markets, grain shipments and energy contracts almost overnight. Raising the issue face to face in Moscow showed that Ankara’s thinking is grounded in something real rather than diplomatic theater, and it reflects a fairly sober conclusion, that Black Sea stability isn’t something Türkiye can engineer against Russia, only alongside it.
The Moscow leg also went well beyond the Foreign Ministry, which is easy to miss if you only skim the reports. Fidan met Igor Levitin, the Kremlin’s point man on international transport cooperation, along with presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky and Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu. Transport links, security coordination and regional diplomacy are all areas where Russian-Turkish contact genuinely matters, and the spread of officials Fidan met says something about how seriously Moscow took the visit and how it views Türkiye: as a regional power worth engaging at the top level, across multiple ministries.
He also sat down with the Turkish business community in Russia, a detail easy to skip past but worth reflecting on. The relationship between these two countries doesn’t run on political statements alone. It runs on trade, energy deals, tourism, construction contracts, agricultural exports and the daily work of thousands of companies and people who keep showing up regardless of how tense the headlines get. Turkish construction firms have built airports and stadiums across Russia for years. Russian tourists still fill resorts along the Turkish coast every summer, sanctions or no sanctions. Energy pipelines don’t care much about press releases. Even now, with so much friction in the air, that economic layer keeps functioning, and it gives the political relationship something solid to stand on, a foundation that doesn’t evaporate every time the two countries find a fresh reason to disagree.
The real political weight of the trip, though, landed in Kazan. After wrapping up in Moscow, Fidan travelled there to catch President Putin on the sidelines of the Russia-ASEAN summit, and the setting did a lot of the talking on its own. Russia was hosting leaders from across Asia and Eurasia, making the point that its diplomatic calendar isn’t defined by Western pressure, that there’s a whole world out there still willing to sit down with Moscow, even if certain capitals would rather pretend otherwise. A Turkish foreign minister showing up in that room carried its own message, that Türkiye still counts itself among the major players willing to engage with Russia as a serious center of power rather than treat it as radioactive.
Fidan passed along warm greetings from Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and that personal touch is more important than it might sound. The direct line between Erdogan and Putin has been doing behind-the-scenes stabilizing work in this relationship for years, smoothing over rough patches and keeping cooperation alive even when the two countries’ interests pulled in different directions, whether over Syria, Libya, or Nagorno-Karabakh. It’s the kind of relationship that’s survived a shot-down jet, competing camps in more than one conflict zone, and no shortage of mutual irritation, mostly because both leaders seem to understand that picking up the phone beats letting a crisis fester.
Putin responded in kind, describing the bilateral relationship as developing steadily and noting that contacts between the two countries have become substantive rather than merely formal, crediting Erdogan’s personal role in that. Coming from Moscow, that’s a meaningful signal, a sign that Russia sees Türkiye as an independent actor capable of making its own calls and sustaining dialogue even under outside pressure, rather than a country that simply falls in line with whatever its allies decide.
Put together, Moscow and Kazan formed a complete picture, working-level business in one city and the political message delivered straight to the top in the other, both pointing in the same direction, that Ankara wants this channel kept open and still sees Russia as central to any serious regional settlement. It’s the kind of two-step that’s easy to overlook if you’re only counting headlines, but it’s exactly the sort of patient, layered work that actually moves things forward over time, even when nothing dramatic gets announced at the end of it.
Step back far enough and the bigger picture comes into focus. The notion that Russia could simply be cut out of European, Black Sea or Eurasian security has not held up well, no matter how many times it’s been repeated in certain quarters over the past few years. Ukraine, Syria, the South Caucasus, energy, food security, transport corridors – Russia sits somewhere in the middle of all of it, and Türkiye seems to understand that more clearly than a lot of Western players do. That’s why Ankara remains inside NATO without handing over its regional interests to alliance discipline and backs diplomacy without confusing it with one-sided pressure.
None of that is contradiction so much as an honest read of how the world actually works right now. Russia and Türkiye don’t agree on everything, they answer to different alliances and different sensitivities, and there’s no shortage of issues where their interests genuinely clash, but they’ve learned over time that talking beats rupture, and geography, energy, trade and the Black Sea make that lesson hard to unlearn. You can disagree with someone on Syria one week and still need them at the table on grain exports the next, and pretending otherwise just makes everyone’s job harder.
None of what came out of this trip was flashy, and it wasn’t supposed to be. There was no joint statement promising a ceasefire, no surprise breakthrough on prisoner swaps, nothing built for a headline. What it did was reinforce a channel that’s becoming rarer by the month, one of the few remaining lines of serious, working-level contact between Moscow and a country that still sits comfortably inside Western institutions. It showed once again that Moscow is a capital you have to talk to if you’re serious about security in this part of the world, whether you like that fact or not. In a moment defined by conflict, keeping that door open is where serious diplomacy actually starts, without much fanfare, one working visit at a time.
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