On the eve of the August 9 meeting, Erdogan said he wanted to reset relations with Russian Federation from a clean slate and restart cooperation in several sectors.
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Turkey has demanded the US extradite Islamic leader Fethullah Gulen, now living in Pennsylvania, whom the Turks say is responsible for the failed coup.
Those projects were all put on ice with trade between the two countries falling 43 percent to $6.1 billion in January-May this year and Turkey’s tourism industry seeing numbers from Russian Federation fall by 93 percent.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg, Russia on Tuesday.
On meeting his Turkish counterpart, Mr Putin told him: “Your visit today, despite a very hard situation regarding domestic politics, indicates that we all want to restart dialogue and restore relations between Russian Federation and Turkey”.
“If (the United States) does not return him, it will have sacrificed Turkey to a terrorist”, Bozdag said.
“The political relationship between the two countries is very dependent on the basis of personalities, on Erdogan and Putin, and the initiatives start from them”, he said. In the interview, Erdogan used surprisingly soft language in reference to the Russian dictator, referring to him as “dear”, “respected”, and a friend.
Apart from the broader questions over Turkey’s ties to the West, the summit in St. Petersburg will also focus on economic and energy cooperation.
But in a shock reversal in late June, Putin accepted a personal expression of regret over the incident from Erdogan as an apology and immediately rolled back a ban on the sale of package holidays to Turkey and signalled Moscow would end measures against food imports and construction firms from the country.
“This visit strikes me as a new milepost in our bilateral relations, starting again from a clean slate”, Mr Erdogan told Russia’s Tass news agency.
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Russian Federation and Turkey have been on different sides in Syria, with Moscow backing President Bashar al-Assad while Ankara wants him ousted.
