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Erdogan Hints Readiness For US-Iran Mediation As Putin Visits Ankara

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Turkey will work to defuse tensions between the U.S. and Iran because it has the ability to talk to both sides, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the inauguration of a new natural-gas pipeline to Russia.

“Our region is going through very painful days,” Erdogan said at the ceremony on Wednesday, which was also attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We don’t want Iraq, Syria, Lebanon or the Gulf region, which is home to more than 30% of the energy trade, to become a theater for proxy wars.”NATO-member Turkey has cordial relations with its eastern neighbor, Iran, and Erdogan enjoys warm ties with President Donald Trump. At the same time, Ankara’s alliance with Washington has been badly tested by the Turkish government’s purchase of a Russian missile-defense system designed to shoot down U.S. warplanes.

At dawn on Wednesday, Iran fired more than a dozen missiles at U.S.-Iraqi airbases, in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike that killed a top Iranian general last week. The absence of American casualties could potentially mitigate any dramatic escalation, and both countries appeared to offer conciliatory messages after the missile assault.

Putin traveled to Istanbul at a time of deepening ties and new conflict between Ankara and Moscow. TurkStream, the conduit inaugurated on Wednesday, is the third gas pipeline between their countries. Its launch will broaden Turkey’s dependence on Russian energy imports from even as defense and tourism cooperation grows.

The two leaders didn’t comment on their discussions of rising tensions in the Middle East and North Africa. Their countries are arrayed on opposite sides of a proxy war in Libya, and a Russian-backed offensive on Syria’s last major rebel bastion is also straining ties. The campaign to retake Idlib, controlled by onetime al-Qaeda affiliates and Turkish-backed rebels, has unleashed an exodus toward Turkey, which already shelters the largest number of Syrian refugees in the world.

Putin paid a surprise visit to Syria on Tuesday, his second since its civil war began in 2011.

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