Turkey needs Russian tourists to flow back to the Turkish resorts.
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In his talk with Le Monde, Erdogan alluded to reports – which the State Department will not confirm – that Kerry will visit Turkey later this month.
The earlier uptick in relations between Turkey and Russian Federation was built on a macho friendship between Mr Putin and Mr Erdogan, two combative leaders in their early 60s credited with restoring confidence to their nations in the wake of financial crises but also criticised for clamping down on human rights.
“The Russian President was much quicker in his condemnation of the attempted coup than many of Turkey’s Western allies and they’ve [the Western allies] also expressed alarm at the extent of the post-coup crackdown”, said Al Jazeera’s Smith. Relations remained at a freezing point for seven months until Erdogan met the Russian demand for an apology over the incident.
Those projects were put on ice with trade between the two countries plunging 43 percent in January-May this year to $6.1 billion, and Turkey’s tourism industry seeing visitor numbers from Russian Federation fall by 93 percent.
“Currently Turkey can not enter Syria, it can not do anything in Syria because the Russian forces are there”, Erhan Ersan, a Russian affairs specialist at Istanbul’s Marmara University, told Al Jazeera. Turkey has been holding nearly daily mass rallies since July 15 in support of democracy and the government and against the plotters.
Erdogan’s trip to Russian Federation is also his first foreign one since the failed coup in his country on July 15 which saw the authorities hitting back at the opponents and blaming the West for the attempt to topple Erdogan. He also called Putin a “friend”. Tens of thousands of soldiers, police officers, civil servants and academics have been arrested or suspended from their jobs, accused of links to the coup plot.
She said that the USA expected all parties in Turkey such as the media, civil society and the government “to be responsible in their statements on this”. Moscow accused Ankara of supporting terrorism, while Turkey accused Russian Federation of violating its airspace and bombing civilian targets inside Syria.
However, Cavusoglu noted that “there may be some disagreements” on whether Syrian President Bashar Assad should stay in power.
Despite Erdogan’s frequent complaints in the past about USA cooperation with Kurdish fighters battling the Assad regime in Syria, the US hasn’t stopped working with those rebels.
“We believe our relations and our partnership and our friendship with Turkey is strong”, she told reporters, adding that any extradition of Gulen would be “a legal, technical process. governed by the 1981 extradition treaty signed by both of our countries”.
Turkey’s president cozied up to his “dear friend” Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in a visit meant to send a message to his allies in the West, whom he blames for what he considers a lack of support after a failed coup.
“It does raise questions about if we are tough with these countries, tough with China, and we do therefore push them into the same corner, is that actually advantageous for us in security terms?”
But Erdogan’s cordial trip to Russian Federation, a nation at odds with the West on a host of issues from Syria to Ukraine, may give Turkey’s allies pause for thought.
“It’s not a zero sum gain”. “They have relationships around the world”.
Turkey is an important American ally in the Middle East.
The United States, and the rest of the West to a degree, had fallen out with Russian Federation over its seizure of Crimea and its dispatch of forces to eastern Ukraine, leading to economic and financial sanctions against Mr. Putin.
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“If the U.S. does not deliver (Gulen), they will sacrifice relations with Turkey for the sake of a terrorist”, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told reporters during a televised briefing in the capital Ankara.
