EditTurkey warns Russia and Ukraine against spreading war to Black Sea and Caspian
The National Security Council called on the belligerents to lower tensions and take concrete steps toward peace
Four years after the first Istanbul talks, Turkey’s National Security Council on 6 August warned that the strategic deadlock in the Russia-Ukraine war cannot be resolved by turning neighboring regions – particularly the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea – into zones of conflict. The statement marks the first time official Turkish language has formally connected the Caspian to the war.
A review of public statements from Turkey’s Presidency, Foreign Ministry, Defence Ministry and senior officials shows no earlier official reference linking the Caspian Sea to the Russia-Ukraine conflict before the 6 August communiqué.
Turkey responded to the war relying on the Montreux Convention, direct diplomacy and the initial Istanbul negotiations. It later helped broker limited agreements on grain shipments and prisoner exchanges. By late 2025, repeated attacks on ships, ports and energy infrastructure forced Ankara to confront a second challenge alongside mediation: protecting commercial routes and its own maritime interests.
Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accepted Turkey as a venue for talks. Agreement on what should happen at the table has proved far harder.
Early mediation and limited successes
Turkey set out its legal position on 24 February 2022. The Foreign Ministry described Russia’s military operation against Ukraine as unacceptable and a serious violation of international law, while reaffirming support for Ukraine’s political unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Ankara nevertheless kept channels open with both governments. It applied the Montreux Convention and restricted warship passage through the Turkish Straits under wartime provisions, limiting the naval expansion of the conflict through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles.
Diplomacy followed quickly. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met in Antalya on 10 March. Negotiating teams then gathered in Istanbul on 29 March, when the war was barely a month old.
The Istanbul talks failed to halt the fighting, though their legacy persisted. Moscow continued to cite the 2022 documents as a possible basis for settlement. Ukrainian officials later argued that battlefield conditions and the security environment had changed too much for the same terms to be revived, while insisting that any settlement would require credible guarantees for Ukraine’s sovereignty and security.
Turkey achieved more success with narrower objectives. The Black Sea Grain Initiative, agreed in Istanbul in July 2022 with United Nations involvement, allowed Ukrainian agricultural exports to move through the Black Sea while the war continued. Turkey also facilitated prisoner exchanges. The arrangement did not require the two sides to agree on how the war should end — only on rules for one part of it.
That space narrowed in July 2023 when Russia withdrew from the grain initiative. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tried to revive the mechanism, including during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Sochi that September, but Moscow insisted that restrictions affecting Russian agricultural exports had to be addressed first. Ukraine increasingly turned to alternative shipping routes.
Istanbul remains open
The divide was visible during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Istanbul in March 2024. Erdoğan offered to host a peace summit that would include Russia. Zelenskyy argued that Russian representatives should not attend the first summit, saying Ukraine and its partners should first establish a common plan.
Kyiv later became more open to Russian participation in a subsequent meeting. Ankara’s preference remained consistent: any process intended to end the war would eventually have to include Moscow.
The Istanbul channel reopened fully in 2025. Putin proposed renewed direct talks in Istanbul “without any preconditions.” Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Turkey in May, June and July. The talks produced prisoner exchanges and preserved direct contact, but the core dispute over how a ceasefire should begin remained unresolved.
Moscow continued to refer to the 2022 Istanbul discussions and what it called the root causes of the war. Kyiv demanded a full and unconditional ceasefire before negotiations could move into a meaningful political phase. Neither side rejected Istanbul; they simply arrived with different ideas about the first step.
The war enters Turkey’s maritime space
The character of Ankara’s involvement began to change in late 2025.
On 28 November, the tankers Kairos and Virat were attacked inside Turkey’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea. The Foreign Ministry said the incidents posed serious risks to navigation, life, property and environmental safety and warned against the war spreading across the sea. Ukrainian security sources later claimed responsibility, saying naval drones had targeted vessels linked to Russia’s sanctioned oil trade.
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Days later, MIDVOLGA-2 reported an attack around 80 nautical miles from the Turkish coast before heading toward Sinop. Kyiv denied involvement.
Ankara initially avoided treating every attack as evidence against the same side. That stance became harder to maintain as incidents accumulated and both Moscow and Kyiv pressed Turkey to accept competing versions of events.
In December, Ankara moved from general warnings to a specific proposal. During Erdoğan’s meeting with Putin in Ashgabat on 12 December, the Turkish president raised a limited ceasefire covering energy facilities and ports. Zelenskyy had publicly backed the idea the previous day. The Kremlin did not publicly accept the arrangement; spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was working for “peace, not a ceasefire.”
Russian strikes on Ukrainian ports later the same day damaged three Turkish-owned vessels. Returning from his talks with Putin, Erdoğan said the Black Sea should not be treated as a battleground and called for safe navigation for all sides.
By the end of 2025, maritime security was no longer background to Turkey’s diplomacy – it had become part of the same file.
Escalating pressure on Turkish interests
The pressure continued into 2026. On 26 March, the Turkish-operated tanker Altura was struck inside Turkey’s exclusive economic zone near the Bosphorus while carrying Russian crude; its crew was Turkish. The Foreign Ministry said Turkey reserved the right to take necessary measures under international law to protect its economic interests.
Further incidents followed. The Turkish-owned cargo ship ANT was struck on 28 May while sailing from Ukraine toward Turkey; two Turkish citizens were injured. On 5 June, the Turkish-flagged fishing vessel DURU 67 was attacked off Crimea and sank; five Turkish fishermen were injured and one later died. Ankara did not name the attacker in either case.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan raised the maritime issue directly with Lavrov in Moscow on 16 June, warning against developments that could harm Turkey’s interests and security in the Black Sea while renewing Ankara’s offer to host further negotiations.
By June and July, the National Security Council was warning against the war escalating and spreading to neighboring regions, particularly the Black Sea. A Turkish-owned ship near Chernomorsk was attacked on 22 June, injuring two Turkish citizens. The Foreign Ministry now explicitly described such incidents as a threat to Turkey’s interests.
Containing parts of the war
The maritime attacks did not end Turkey’s diplomatic efforts, but they narrowed the kind of agreement Ankara sought. During talks in Kyiv on 16 July, Fidan said that if a comprehensive ceasefire could not be achieved, Russia and Ukraine could consider a moratorium covering Black Sea security and energy security. He said the Ukrainian side shared a serious degree of understanding with Turkey on the proposal.
Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria, together with Turkey, also expanded the Mine Countermeasures Black Sea Task Group in July 2026 to include protection of critical undersea infrastructure.
From Montreux to the Caspian
Ukraine then carried out operations in a sea where Turkey has no coastline. On 25 July, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had struck a Russian warship and vessels used for Iran-linked military cargo in the Caspian Sea. Iran separately reported that an attack on one of its commercial vessels had killed a sailor.
Iran war spreads to Red Sea and Caspian, Gulf quiet as U.S. forgoes strikes
Moscow and Tehran blamed Kyiv for expanding the geographical scope of the conflict. Turkey did not adopt that attribution.
Nine days after Russian statements on the Caspian attacks, Turkey’s National Security Council issued its 6 August communiqué. It stated that the strategic deadlock could not be overcome by turning neighboring regions – particularly the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea – into conflict zones. The council called on the belligerents to lower tensions and take concrete steps toward peace. It assigned responsibility to neither side.
From the opening weeks of the war in 2022, Türkiye used Montreux to limit its naval consequences and Istanbul to create a negotiating channel between Moscow and Kyiv. The Istanbul table is still available four years later. The area Ankara is trying to keep outside the fighting is considerably larger.
The original article by Murat Yildiz, chief editor of EUalive’s partner Bosphorus News, can be found here.
Caption: Russian President Vladimir Putin (2-L) and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan (2-R) attend a meeting on the sidelines of the Russia-ASEAN Summit in Kazan, Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, 17 June 2026. EPA/SERGEY BOBYLEV / SPUTNIK / KREMLIN POOL
Updated: August 7, 2026 - 16:18
