Turkey’s former Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis told Sputnik on Tuesday that Russian Federation and Turkey should focus more on the fight against the Daesh terror group as a way of closing the gap on Syria and pushing the peace talks there forward.
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“The officials will go to St. Petersburg tonight”, Cavusoglu said.
The EU is making serious mistakes in its response to Turkey’s failed coup and if the West “loses” Turkey it will be because of its own mistakes, not Ankara’s good ties with Russia, China or the Islamic world, Turkey’s foreign minister also said. He said support for European Union membership in Turkey had fallen because of the bloc’s sympathetic attitude towards those who carried out the July 15 coup attempt.
His comments reflect the deep frustration in Turkey over the perception that Europe and the United States have given lukewarm support to Ankara after the failed July 15 coup, when a faction of the military commandeered tanks and warplanes in an attempt to topple the government. “This is because of the allegation of being a member of the Fetullah Terrorist Organization [FETO], not because they were involved in the incident”.
Turkey is pressing the United States to extradite USA -based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom it accuses of orchestrating the coup attempt, and has expressed frustration at its slow response.
The shooting down of the Russian jet led to a freeze in relations, including economic sanctions and a bar on Russian tourism to Turkey that only thawed in June when Erdogan wrote to his counterpart and the two later spoke by telephone.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu addresses the media in Ankara, Turkey, July 29, 2016. -Turkish ties, with some Turkish officials implying Washington could have been behind the coup.
“On Syria, we think the same on the issue of a cease-fire, on humanitarian aid and a political solution”, the minister said.
Cavusoglu also touched on Turkish-Russian cooperation on Syria, where the two have supported opposing sides in the five-year civil war. We don’t believe it is appropriate that the moderate opposition is attacked.
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“We have always regarded our relations with Russian Federation as complementary not as an alternative (to the West)”, Cavusoglu said.
