Diplomatic breakthroughs only happen when statesmen step up and invest scarce personal time to broker compromise between competing states. The Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul which finally started on May 16 would not have happened without Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s personal involvement. At a time when Europe appears distracted and increasingly divided, Türkiye continues to establish itself as an essential diplomatic player. 

For much of the day on Thursday, the long-anticipated restart of direct dialogue between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul seemed in doubt.  Accusations and counter-accusations dominated international media coverage. Yet late that night, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy finally agreed to send a negotiating team to Istanbul “out of respect for President Trump and President Erdogan.”

Let’s be clear, the most significant breakthrough on May 16 is that the talks commenced, after a three-year hiatus, during which meaningful dialogue between the warring parties seemed impossible. That progress owes much to Erdogan’s personal intervention, including hosting  Zelenskyy for talks in Ankara earlier in the week.

This moment is not an isolated success, but part of a broader pattern that reflects Türkiye’s growing diplomatic ambition—and Erdogan’s evolution into a statesman operating on the world stage

Following his election, US President Donald Trump remarked that: “President Erdogan is a smart person with whom I get along well.” The two leaders have since discussed future cooperation in areas including Syria and Gaza, further enhancing Türkiye’s diplomatic reach.

Strategic weight

Erdogan’s emergence as a leading international statesman reflects a confluence of strategic attributes, sovereign flexibility, and a results-focused diplomatic approach.

Türkiye’s geography, population, economic clout, and military capacity are all major strategic assets. According to the IMF, Türkiye in 2025 has the largest economy among Islamic nations in the G20. It also maintains the largest military in NATO after the United States, supported by robust and experienced diplomatic institutions. 

Britain, which once shared some of these attributes, now struggles to assert relevance, trapped between the growing polarity that separates Europe and America.

At the heart of Erdogan’s approach is a foreign policy rooted in the principle of ‘Peace at Home, Peace in the World’. Originally articulated by Atatürk, this doctrine sees domestic stability as the foundation for international engagement.

From Britain to Germany, and France to Romania, European states are riven by upheaval. Promoting a proxy war in Ukraine has driven de-industrialisation, slowed growth, and sowed political discord. This has left Europe sidelined and shouting from the bleachers as regional powers like Türkiye step in to assume a more influential role in resolving complex global challenges, whether that’s in Ukraine or Syria, or on global trade.  

Unlike European leaders, Erdogan is not bound by the constraints of bloc consensus or lowest-common-denominator diplomacy. As head of a powerful sovereign state at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, he can act quickly and decisively.

And with the return of Trump to the White House, the US appears increasingly willing to work with Türkiye as a more reliable and agile partner at a time when Europe is increasingly unable to bring its weight to bear in international affairs.

Track record of tactical diplomacy

In recent years, Erdogan has delivered tangible results on some of the world’s most complex diplomatic challenges.

One notable example is the Black Sea grain initiative, brokered in July 2022 during a period of skyrocketing global food prices. The agreement, reached in Istanbul with the backing of UN Secretary General António Guterres, facilitated crucial grain exports from Ukraine despite the ongoing war. 

In 2024, Türkiye mediated the Ankara Accord between Somalia and Ethiopia, an ambitious deal addressing Somali concerns about Ethiopian naval ambitions in breakaway Somaliland, while offering Ethiopia commercial access to a Red Sea port, to drive its economic recovery.

Erdogan is also playing a potentially transformative role in resolving long-standing regional conflicts. After four decades of violence, the PKK terror group now appears to be moving closer to the renunciation of armed conflict as part of a broader peace initiative with Türkiye. This could reshape the regional balance as Syria emerges from international isolation in the wake of Bashar al-Assad’s downfall.

Returning to Russia and Ukraine, President Erdogan’s role in hosting this new round of talks in Istanbul is consistent with the leadership he provided in the March and April 2022 talks, shortly after war broke out. Türkiye also played a key role in facilitating prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine that same year.  As the normally partisan BBC has pointed out, Türkiye is one of the few countries that has maintained good relations with Ukraine and Russia and “can speak to all but is beholden to none”.

The early 21st century has witnessed a catastrophic evaporation of statesmanship in the Western world. Whether it’s on resolving the genocide in Gaza or ending the devastating war in Ukraine, Western political leaders have sought to pick sides, rather than to search for outcomes that benefit humanity as a whole.

Erdogan, by contrast, has carefully positioned Türkiye as a diplomatic convenor, seeking to bridge divides through mutual respect and practical compromise.  

Any lasting peace depends on both sides feeling they’ve achieved a fair outcome—a truth European diplomats have repeatedly overlooked in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is abandoning the heavy and encumbering baggage of Biden and, before that, Obama era of normative foreign policy, in favour of a more transactional realist approach.

That shift is likely to reinforce Türkiye’s status as a vital pillar in regional stability. Even the decision by Russian and Ukrainian delegations to return to the table in Istanbul marks a major diplomatic success, made possible by Erdogan’s steady, patient efforts behind the scenes.