Amid the lack of even the slightest prerequisites for de- escalation in the deepening crisis in the Russian-Turkish relations, Russian President Vladimir Putin's possible direct conversation with Recep Tayyip Erdogan may result in a new phase of tension, Arman Melikyan, political analyst, ex-foreign minister of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, says in an interview with ArmInfo.
According to the Turkish media reports, the Turkish president has repeatedly tried to have a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart to discuss the problems in the bilateral relations. Moscow is keeping silence.
"To all appearances, the Kremlin realizes this perfectly. This is why Moscow has ignored Erdogan's request to hold a telephone conversation with Putin in the light of the incident on the Syrian-Turkish border," he says.
The analyst thinks that amid the current geopolitical situation, the contact of the two countries' leaders will be qualified as Moscow's renouncement of its previous harsh positions. Melikyan does not doubt that following such a contact Turks will find the way to humiliate Moscow once again and to seriously harm the image and authority of the Russian political leadership in both Russia and abroad.
Melikyan thinks that the closest allies of Russia within the EEU and the CSTO, which represent the Turkic speaking states of Central Asia, should not try to offer their mediation for the settlement of the Russian- Turkish military and political crisis. The analyst thinks that such attempts will discredit the initiators of mediation and will have a negative effect on the mutual confidence with the Kremlin.
Moscow's relations with Ankara deteriorated after a Russian Su-24 aircraft was downed on November 24 by a missile fired from a Turkish F-16 fighter over Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin described the downing as a "stab in the back" performed by the "accomplices of terrorists."