Mevlut Cavusoglu was speaking Thursday night after his first meeting with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov during an OSCE summit in the Serbian capital of Belgrade.
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“The meeting between the two foreign ministers lasted for 40 minutes”, an unnamed Turkish foreign ministry official told the French news agency AFP, without giving further details.
“I spoke the next day after that violation of global law (the attack on Russia’s Su-24) to Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu and did not hear from him anything new compared to what the Turkish leadership had said in public while justifying its unacceptable criminal action”, he said.
Relations between Moscow and Ankara have deteriorated considerably after a Turkish Air Force jet shot down a Russian warplane in the border region between Syria and Turkey on November 24.
The Turkish premier said Turkey aimed to increase energy cooperation with Azerbaijan but stressed these efforts were independent of the spat with Russian Federation.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has called for a broad worldwide front against terrorism.
Russian Federation on Wednesday accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family of involvement in illegal oil trading with Islamic State militants, ratcheting up the heat in the bilateral dispute. Russian Federation says the plane was hit above Syrian territory. Russian military intervention in Syria frustrated the Turkish government and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation alliance and the recent downing of a Russian military jet in Turkish airspace was met with measured anger by the Kremlin.
Moscow deployed long-range air defence missile systems to its base in Syria 50 kilometres south of the border with Turkey and slammed an array of economic sanctions on Turkey, including a ban on imports of fruit and vegetables and the sales of tour packages. “The Turkish minister confirmed the approaches previously voiced publically by both the president and prime minister of Turkey”.
Meanwhile, Cavusoglu said the crisis was on the way to cooling down and expressed sorrow for the death of the Russian pilot.
Thousands of Russian citizens from Chechnya, Dagestan and elsewhere have joined the Islamic State group in Syria.
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“Some countries in the Middle East and North Africa which used to be stable and relatively prosperous – Iraq, Libya, Syria – have turned into zones of chaos and anarchy that pose a threat to entire world”, he said.
