Editorial -- World Leaders Not Doing Enough to Stop War in Ukraine

Once again, when you find yourself to the right of an authoritarian nationalist like Turkish President Recep Erdogan, you have to think long and hard about your stances and values. 

The President of Turkey Thursday says he has always believed in the power of dialogue and diplomacy. He knows from first hand experience. During the conflict in Syria, a Russian plane encroached into a sliver of Turkish airspace and was shot down. There was widespread fear that World War III would be triggered and that Article 5 would be invoked, since Turkey is a member of NATO. It didn’t happen. 

In situations like this, there are always hotheaded people who want to drag the two powers into a hot war. Subsequently, a Turkish extremist shot and killed the Russian Ambassador to Turkey as he was giving a speech. But instead of dragging the two countries, and NATO, into a shooting war with Russia, it had the opposite effect. Turkey went out of its way to condemn the violence and to bring the killer to justice.

Mr. Erdogan said that, “The UN could not end the war, could not stop the bloodshed, and it could not find a solution to the energy and food crisis.” He called on other world leaders to join Turkey in its diplomatic efforts and said that his diplomacy with Ukraine and Russia, with which Turkey has close relations with, would continue.

He said there needs to be a joint effort of all world leaders, and everyone should be talking to Presidents Putin and Zelensky to open the door for diplomacy. He said that any negative approaches would not bring the result we expect, but would only bring more death and destruction.

The President of Turkey is right. In 2012, when the US passed the Magnitsky Act, allowing it to lay the groundwork for sanctions against Russia in the future, Freedom House, a human rights group, ranked Russia’s human rights record at 5.5, which was low. Now, it is ranked at 6.5, which is even lower. And if sanctions were an effective tool, we would have resolved the situation between North and South Korea a long time ago.