On June 23, again before an iftar d

On June 23, again before an iftar dinner, Tuimebayev called Kalın again with an “urgent” note. Nazarbayev had landed in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, for the Shanghai Cooperation Summit and would meet with Putin the next morning before the end of the summit by 1 p.m. If the letter could get there by then, even with slight editing, that might help end the crisis. Kalın immediately informed Erdoğan, who called Gen. Akar to the Presidency at around 11 p.m. on June 23.

In the meantime, Kalın made another draft and working together with Russian translators and diplomats from the Kazakh Embassy in Ankara, they managed to find the Russian word of “izvinite” – which is stronger than saying “sorry,” but not as strong as “apology.”

Erdoğan signed the letter and asked Kalın to take off immediately. Kalın’s jet took off from Ankara at 3 a.m. on the morning of June 24. The first stop was Istanbul to take Çağlar, his adviser and a Russian translator from there. The plane took off from Istanbul at around 4:30 a.m. but was faced with the risk of no flight permission over Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The Foreign Ministry started to call up those capitals. Messaging via WhatsApp thanks to the WiFi on board the presidential plane, they were able to get permission from Georgia just 20 minutes before entering its air space. The permission from Azerbaijan came while flying over Georgia, from Turkmenistan while over Azerbaijan, but there was nothing from Uzbekistan. Its airspace had been closed for security reasons regarding the Shanghai Summit. Nazarbayev offered a Kazakh presidential helicopter waiting in Chimkent near the Uzbek border to take them to Tashkent, but the plane circling over Turkmenistan was about to run out of fuel. So Nazarbayev applied to Uzbek President Islam Karimov and asked for permission for “his visitors from Turkey;” Karimov approved it.

The plane carrying Kalın and Çağlar landed at Tashkent at around 12:15. Nazarbayev was waiting for them and took them to a meeting room upstairs. Nazarbayev asked for the Russian copy of the letter, read it carefully and said, “This is good.” The Turks only then learned that Putin and his delegation was in the next room. Nazarbayev asked if Ushakov could join them, told Ushakov that the letter was acceptable and told everyone in the room that “was it” from him and that they should sort out the rest.

After taking the letter to Putin, Ushakov returned to the Turkish delegation soon and said Putin approved it despite finding it “a tad closer to the Turkish position” because of the new word found to replace apology.
Kalın and Ushakov agreed that the statement was to be made on June 27 in Moscow after Ankara saw the message in advance. The Russians kept their promise. The statement was made on time. It was right after a statement made on June 26 to say that the final talks in Rome for the normalization of relations with Israel were successfully finalized by Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu.

Two important steps were taken in two consecutive days to normalize Turkey’s relations with its neighborhood.

Little did Turkey know that there was going to be a military coup attempt in just two weeks’ time on July 15.
August/09/2016