The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is planning to pay a visit to Moscow next month to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin – the Interfax news agency quoted Turkey’s ambassador to Russia, Huseyin Dirioz.
This will be Erdoğan’s fourth meeting with Putin over the past six months. According him, the president is expected to visit Moscow in early March. The Turkish Ambassador to Russia declared that the visit will serve to further establish bilateral relations and cooperation between the two countries. According to the ambassador, Ankara and Moscow were also working together to bring peace in Syria, and will discuss how to implement joint forces to solve the crisis.
Russian-Turkish Relations
Russian-Turkish Relations were strained last year when Turkey shot down a Russian bomber on the Syrian border. After Turkey shot down the Su-24 jet Russia, imposed trade sanctions and suspended Russian package tours to Turkey. Russia has now decided to resume those package tours – an important source of income for Turkish economy.
After the coup the two leaders first met in St. Petersburg on Aug. 9, 2016.
Speaking in St Petersburg Mr Erdogan thanked Mr Putin, saying a call from the Russian leader “meant a lot psychologically”. He expressed the hope that “the Moscow-Ankara friendship axis will be restored”.
“The priority is to get back to the pre-crisis level of co-operation,” Told Putin to Erdoğan back then.
