NATO military drills planned for the Black Sea have been called off or postponed due to the conflict in Ukraine, Turkey said. Exercises will not move ahead due to continuing hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, Turkey’s top diplomat said.
NATO military drills planned for the Black Sea have been postponed or canceled outright, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, citing a decades-old convention which gives Ankara veto power over naval deployments in the region.
Speaking to Anadolu for an interview on Tuesday, the FM explained Turkey’s reluctance to go along with a Western sanctions campaign on Moscow in response to its attack on Ukraine, stating that his country is seeking to avoid increased tensions as it attempts to broker a negotiated end to the conflict.
“If we had joined the sanctions, we would not have been able to fulfill the mediation role that we have now. We applied the Montreux Convention to warships, but the airspace, that corridor, we have to keep it open,” he said, referring to a 1936 agreement granting Turkey rights to regulate maritime traffic through the Black Sea.
“We have, in accordance with the convention, canceled or postponed planned NATO drills. We play an important role, and we fulfill our obligations,” Cavusoglu added.
Turkey has invoked the Montreux Convention to deny a number of Russian warships access to the Black Sea via the Bosporus strait since the war in Ukraine kicked off in February, though has made exceptions for vessels returning to their home ports, as provided under the agreement.
While foreign minister did not specify what drills had been dropped or rescheduled, the North Atlantic military bloc has carried out a flurry of exercises across Europe in recent weeks, including one set of drills conducted in Estonia last month involving 15,000 troops from 14 nations, held just 40 miles from the nearest Russian military base.
In mid-May, NATO forces carried out a training mission on the Black Sea, in which American Navy SEALs drilled foreign special operations units as part of the annual Trojan Footprint exercise. The event included more than 3,300 soldiers from 30 countries, and was conducted in the Black Sea states of Bulgaria and Romania, as well as Croatia, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Ukraine, too, was slated to take part in the drills before Moscow launched its attack, having participated in 2021’s Trojan Footprint.
NATO air policing along the Black Sea was also intensified in April, seeing Dutch fighter jets deployed to bolster the Bulgarian Air Force following a series of similar moves to shore up the alliance’s “eastern flank.”
Cavusoglu went on to argue that Turkey’s role as broker between Moscow and Kiev is “welcomed” by many other countries, insisting that Ankara would only go along with sanctions on Russia if they are brought by the United Nations.
“Everyone can now impose sanctions on anyone they want. That’s their business. We have chosen the role of mediator, we are trying to make things easier,” he said.
The FM’s comments come one day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan floated a new offer for negotiations between the warring parties in Istanbul, making the proposal during a call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.