Putin in Turkey for talks on weapons deal, Syria

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday met his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks on Syria and a key weapons deal, hoping to strengthen an increasingly active relationship that has troubled the West.

Despite a regional rivalry that goes back to the Ottoman Empire and the Romanov dynasty, Russia and Turkey have been working closely since a 2016 reconciliation ended a crisis caused by the shooting down of a Russian war plane over Syria.

"Russia and Turkey are cooperating very tightly," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said ahead of the one-day working visit by Putin to Ankara.

Erdogan welcomed Putin at the doors of his vast presidential palace in Ankara for the evening talks, shortly after the Russian president landed at the city's airport.

The two will hold a working dinner before a one-on-one meeting and a late night press conference at 9:30 pm (1830 GMT), the Turkish presidency said.

Turkey and Russia have been on opposing sides during the more than six years of war in Syria, with Russia the key backer of President Bashar al-Assad and Turkey supporting rebels seeking his ouster.

But while Turkey's policy is officially unchanged, Ankara has notably cooled its attacks on the Damascus regime since its cooperation with Russia began to heat up.

Both Moscow and Ankara are pushing for the creation of four "de-escalation zones" in Syria, in line with peace talks in Astana, to end the civil war that has raged since 2011.

With Moscow's ally Assad now having the upper hand in the conflict, Russia will be hoping Turkey will bring the rebels it has supported into the political process.

Turkey, a NATO member, has signed a deal reportedly worth $2 billion (1.7 billion euros) to buy S-400 air defence systems from Russia, a move that has shocked its allies in the alliance.

Economic cooperation is also beginning to flourish, with Russian tourists returning to Turkey and the two countries working on a Black Sea gas pipeline.

- 'Loaded with contradictions' -

Yet analysts say that while both countries share an interest in seeking to discomfort the West by showing off close cooperation, their relationship falls well short of a sincere strategic alliance.

"Relations between Turkey and Russia may appear to be friendly, but they are loaded with contradictions and set to remain unstable in the near term," Pavel Baev and Kemal Kirisci of the Brookings Institution wrote in a study this month.

Russia's stance on the non-binding Kurdish independence vote is also troubling for Turkey, for whom opposing Kurdish statehood is a cornerstone of foreign policy due to its own Kurdish minority.

The Russian foreign ministry said Wednesday that while Moscow supports the territorial integrity of Iraq, it "views the Kurds' national aspirations with respect".

"Russia has been trying to abstain from taking a clear stance on the issue and Turkey may be wanting to get some assurances and explanations," Timur Akhmetov, Ankara-based Turkey expert at the Russian International Affairs Council, told AFP.

In public, Erdogan has shied away from attacking Russia's stance on the Kurdish referendum, declaring that Israel was the only state that backed the poll.

Deliveries of the S-400s, meanwhile, could be years away due to orders from China, while Ankara's insistence on a technology transfer as part of the deal may also create problems.

But both Moscow and Ankara are, for now, happy to send a message to the West that they are serious about defence cooperation.

"They are trying to utilise the issue of the S-400 for their respective political interests," Akhmetov told AFP.

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