In back-to-back weeks Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended first the Shanghai Cooperation Organization gathering in Astana and then the NATO summit in Washington DC. The contrast was stark.
Erdoğan made clear Türkiye’s opposition to escalation with Russia and US support for Israel, while Washington tried its usual small-carrot-big-stick approach. Far more interesting was what was happening with Türkiye, Russia, and China at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization gathering the week before the NATO summit.
But first, the problems with the world’s “most successful military alliance.” Türkiye is opposed to further escalation of Washington’s conflict with Russia. Public opinion at home is overwhelmingly against Israel and the US (during the NATO summit Erdogan said the US is “complicit” in Israeli war crimes). The US continues to support Türkiye’s Kurdish enemies in Syria while there are increasing problems with Syrian refugees in Türkiye. NATO generally seems hellbent on starting even more conflicts, such as with China which is in no one’s interest, but only Türkiye, Hungary, and Slovakia are apparently willing to say so.
Meanwhile, Ankara is facing fresh sanctions threats from the US where the House of Representatives is pushing forward with legislation that would require the Biden administration to sanction Russian nuclear energy company Rosatom and “its affiliates and subsidiaries…[and] authorize secondary sanctions on any foreign person engaged in significant transactions with Rosatom.”
This would have major implications for Türkiye’s first and only nuclear power plant, which was inaugurated last year with the delivery of the first nuclear fuel to the plant site – a major occasion in Türkiye as it marked the country joining the ranks of nuclear power nations. Rosatom financed and is building the plant that would provide roughly 10 percent of Türkiye’s energy needs once completed, but has recently faced delays due to difficulties obtaining equipment from third countries because of US sanctions. [1]
At the same time that the US is trying to muscle out Rosatom 14 years after it signed a deal with Ankara and after nine years of work on the project, it is is trying to pressure Türkiye into deals with American companies to build reactors in the country despite a whole host of issues with US designs, safety, cost, and the overarching geopolitical strategy since they would likely still rely on Russia (or possibly China) for key parts of the nuclear fuel supply chain.
Despite the threat of sanctions, Türkiye remains in talks with Russia for a second nuclear power plant, as well as with China’s for a third plant.
