“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”, Putin said as the two met in the city’s Constantine Palace.
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Relations between the two countries froze after the incident until late June 2016 when the Turkish president, Recep Tayip Erdogan sent a letter to the Kremlin expressing his condolences to the family of the pilot who died.
The Russian president said that the Turkish side had stressed that economic issues arose due to visa restrictions in the transport sector.
But he also said that he wanted to expand relations with Turkey, perhaps in reference to Moscow’s efforts to eradicate Islamic extremist forces in Syria and Iraq.
With its tense relations with U.S. and the European Union, and the bad economic situation following Russian sanctions, Ankara had to mend its relationship with Moscow, says Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak from Tel Aviv University.
Erdoğan’s day trip to St Petersburg is his first foreign visit since the failed coup in Turkey last month and the ensuing purge which has given rise to serious diplomatic tension between Ankara and its Western allies.
On the other hand, Russia, despite its animosity with Turkey, was the first to condemn the coup.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday after talks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin that the two nations can rebuild their damaged ties and make them even closer, promising to back major energy projects with Russian Federation.
Ankara and Moscow started to work on liberalization of services and investments last year, including a joint investment fund in 2015 but everything was suspended after the downing of a Russian jet in November last year.
Erdogan blames Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who lives in self-imposed exile in the USA state of Pennsylvania, and his followers for the failed coup. “At the same time I do not believe that relations between the two countries will become so close that Russian Federation can offer Turkey an alternative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation security partnership”.
Erdogan said he hoped that ties with Russian Federation will become “more robust” and that he aspires “to bring bilateral relations to the old level or even beyond”.
The two leaders also said they would discuss one major issue dividing them – the war in Syria – after the news conference.
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Russian Federation is flying a bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad while Turkey says that the Syrian leader must leave power.
