ATHENS — As more Russian troops encircle Kiev and as the capital’s Ukrainian residents pile up sandbags and hedgehog defenses to help repel them should a full-scale attack come to pass, Turkey will take its turn at the diplomatic wheel. 

Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers meet in the southern Turkish city of Antalya for face-to-face talks Thursday. President Erdoğan has pushed for Turkey to play a mediation role and expressed hope the talks can avert more tragedy and help produce a ceasefire, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reports. 

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, will be joined by the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, “with NATO member Turkey keen to maintain strong relations with both sides despite the conflict,” according to Hurriyet. 

Early returns were not promising, as the Associated Press reported that the Ukrainian foreign minister said he discussed a 24-hour cease-fire with his Russian counterpart, but did not make progress.

Although Turkey may seem like an outlier in terms of diplomatic clout and Mr. Erdogan’s resumé tilts decidedly more to the picture of an autocrat than peacemaker, it’s worth recalling that Ukraine’s Black Sea coast sits opposite Turkey’s, that fewer than 200 miles separate Turkey from Russia, and that despite its reputation as something of a regional troublemaker — just ask Greece — the NATO member country can sometimes surprise. 

Only yesterday the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, traveled to Ankara for talks with Mr. Erdogan, signaling a thaw in relations between Israel and Turkey after more than decade of sometimes ugly rupture. Mr. Erdogan called the Herzog visit, widely publicized in Turkey, a “turning point” in Turkish-Israeli relations. 

The choice to hold today’s trilateral meeting in Antalya, on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast, is no accident. The location is at a good remove from the Black Sea, which is a staging area for the Russian navy as a reported 30 warships are now plying the waters off the coast of Odessa, likely the next big southern Ukrainian city in Moscow’s crosshairs.

Turkey recently invoked a 1936 treaty governing access to the sea lanes to bar additional Russian warships from using the Bosphorus waterway that connects the Mediterranean and Black seas, a mostly symbolic move but one likely not lost on the Kremlin, either.

Yet, as the pro-government newspaper Daily Sabah put it: “Turkey has carefully formulated its rhetoric not to offend Moscow, with which it has close energy, defense and tourism ties.” The paper also notes that Turkey is a traditional ally of Ukraine and has supplied the country with Bayraktar TB2 combat drones that were purchased from Baykar, a Turkish arms supplier, and Kiev has been deploying them in the conflict. 

Some have called Turkey’s stance active neutrality, one whose dividends in terms of tangible results remain to be seen. In the runup to today’s talks, the White House said that Mr. Ergodan spoke to President Biden by telephone on Wednesday.

The view from Turkey is therefore as improbable as it is crucial, given the global stakes of war in Ukraine, the growing shpilkes of a heavily armored Russian convoy at Kiev’s doorstep, and that Turkey is in NATO. 

Both Moscow and Ankara have bristled in the past at what they perceive as American and European plays for dominance on the world stage, so in at least one respect today’s meeting is already a success: While the most watched foreign ministers in the world right now hash it out in Turkey, European leaders are meeting at Versailles to discuss how Ukraine would have to absorb 80,000 pages of rules and regulations and jump through countless other bureaucratic hurdles to join the EU, something Ukraine’s president has said he’d like to see fast-tracked nevertheless.

Yet today more than ever Brussels is, if not completely irrelevant, then certainly backstage. “As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine rolls on, Turkey is caught between major powers — but could be crucial to ending the fighting,” the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. 

The ABC quotes a retired Turkish brigadier-general, Nejat Eslen, who said, “As Turks, this is not our war, this is the earthquake of global competition,” adding, “It is dangerous and this global competition can turn to regional competition and create more earthquakes and wars. We should be very, very careful.”

And how. In the meantime, as the world turns its back on Russia with sanctions and an endless stream of private sector boycotts, transforming an entire country into what the Sun’s A.R. Hoffman has called a “planetary pariah,” Russia’s irascible top diplomat may be grateful to just be able to Get Out of Dodge for a spell: Mr. Lavrov’s touchdown at Antalya marks the Russian’s first trip abroad since Western sanctions targeted him as well as his boss, Vladimir Putin. 

On Wednesday, Mr. Erdogan said, “I hope the meeting between the ministers will open the way to a permanent ceasefire.”

Elsewhere, Britain has just imposed a travel ban and asset freezes on seven more wealthy Russians, including Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of a Premier League soccer club, Chelsea. 

With Ukrainian cities like Mariupol reeling under brutal Russian bombardment and the death toll climbing, and with more than two million people in Kiev girding for more war, President Zelensky is doubtless not the only one watching Turkey from the frigid north today and saying, in one language or another, “Let’s play ball.”