While Turkey remains stuck between the West and Russia on a number of strategic issues, its dilemmas might grow even more complicated with a Chinese addition to the equations, as reports suggest that China could assume a lead role in financing and building a controversial Turkish waterway to the Black Sea.

Turkey’s purchase of Russian air defense systems, US legal proceedings against a Turkish public bank for helping Iran evade US sanctions, rows over the Syrian Kurds and Turkey’s posture in the Eastern Mediterranean have led to unprecedented tensions in Turkish-US ties. In a bid to open itself a wiggle room, Ankara has recently moved to mend fences with its traditional Western partners, seeking to draw on the value of military and economic collaboration.

One way to do that could be through a high-profile Turkish role in NATO efforts to build up deterrence against Russia in its conflict with Ukraine. Turkey has already fostered military cooperation with Ukraine, including the supply of drones to Kyiv, and in January assumed the command of NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, created in 2014 to deter Russia.

In another apparent move to woo the West and in conjunction with a Western strategy to distress Russia in the Black Sea, Ankara is seeking to speed up its project to build an artificial alternative to the Bosporus Strait, called Canal Istanbul, with the apparent intention of opening the 1936 Montreux Convention up for discussion or even bypassing it. The convention regulates transit through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, which form a key maritime route linking the Black and Mediterranean seas. It gives Turkey control of the straits but rests on tight rules for military ships that restrict the entry of non-littoral naval forces to the Black Sea.