Russia expert says Turkey’s role important for stability in Mideast
Turkey and Russia, both empires in the past, have been rediscovering themselves and becoming major players in the world, but Turkey is better positioned than the Russians to be a force for stability in the Middle East, said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace based in Washington, D.C. “Russia has limited interests in the region. There are a few projects that Gazprom and the Russian Railways have been implementing in Libya, and some arms trade with Syria and Algeria,” he told Today’s Zaman in İstanbul after his participation in a March 8 roundtable meeting organized by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV). He added that Russia is involved in tourism from Marrakech to Dubai and that it closely watches increasing oil prices as revolutions in the Arab world continue. “In the Middle East itself, the Russian Federation, unlike the Soviet Union, has no geopolitical designs,” he said. “Unlike the United Stat...