Ukraine-Turkey cooperation has its limits

Turkey cannot extend the same support to Ukraine it has given to Azerbaijan.

On April 10, President Volodymyr Zelensky made his way to Istanbul to take part in the ninth meeting of the Turkish-Ukrainian High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council. The primary purpose of his visit was to solicit support from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against Russia, a more pressing priority than trade and investment. In recent weeks, Ukraine has been feeling the heat. Since the end of March, Moscow has been amassing troops on the Ukrainian-Russian border. According to Kyiv, there are currently about 40,000 Russian troops in the area, not far from the frontlines in the Donbass, and the same number in Crimea which was annexed by Russia in 2014. While Zelensky’s first port of call is the United States, he has good reason to count on Turkey, too. Ankara refuses to recognise Crimea’s annexation and offers rhetorical support to Ukraine. In a joint declaration, Erdogan and Zelensky pledged to continue “coordinating steps aimed at [..] the de-occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, as well as territories in Donetsk and Luhansk regions”. The wording matches their last joint statement from October 2020, when the two leaders met in Turkey.