TURKEY PERSPECTIVE

Ankara, via Daily Sabah, restitutes the letter with a headline that doesn't cheat: "Zelenskyy proposes face-to-face meeting in open letter to Putin". The pro-Erdoğan daily emphasizes "face-to-face", an expression that directly recalls Turkey's 2022 attempts to organize a Putin-Zelensky summit in Istanbul. Turkey has a specific card in this sequence: it remains the only NATO country to maintain a continuous dialogue with Moscow while being militarily allied with Kyiv. This pivotal position gives it natural credibility as a summit host. The Turkish coverage therefore avoids judgments and highlights the idea that the letter reopens the diplomatic window that closed after the failed Istanbul talks of 2022. Bianet, more independent, observes in parallel that the 2026 World Cup in the United States is shaping up amid a climate of fear for migrants — implicitly connecting the Ukrainian sequence to the broader Trumpian landscape. For Ankara, the issue is not peace as such: it is to reposition itself at the center of the game after three years of diplomatic sidelining. For Erdoğan, becoming again the Russia-NATO pivot would be the consecration of his strategic autonomy doctrine — hence the deliberately sober tone, calibrated not to displease any actor and to mark a return to the Istanbul summits of 2022.