Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to hold Friday a bilateral meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the Iran-Russia-Turkey summit on the Syrian crisis.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th September, 2018) Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to hold Friday a bilateral meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the Iran-Russia-Turkey summit on the Syrian crisis.
The history of Russian-Turkish interstate relations is over five centuries old. The Embassy of the Russian Empire in Istanbul was opened on a permanent basis in 1701. The Soviet Union and the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) established diplomatic relations on June 2, 1920.
The document outlining modern Russian-Turkish relations, the Treaty on the Fundamentals of Relations between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Turkey, was signed in 1992.
Putin paid an official visit to Turkey on December 5-6, 2004. After the meeting, the two leaders pledged in a joint declaration to develop bilateral relations into an advanced, multifaceted partnership. The following years were characterized by intensive development of political and economic ties.
On December 1, 2014, Putin paid a state visit to Turkey. Putin and Turkish President Erdogan took part in the fifth meeting of the High-Level Russian-Turkish Cooperation Council.
On February 7 the same year, Erdogan, then prime minister, visited Sochi and met with Putin on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.
On September 23, 2015, Erdogan took a one-day working trip to Moscow, where he held talks with the Russian leader and took part in the opening of a new complex of the Moscow cathedral mosque.
The two leaders held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Antalya on November 16, 2015.
After a long period of dynamic development, bilateral cooperation went downhill after the Turkish Air Force downed a Russian military aircraft in Syrian air space on November 24, 2015, killing the pilot. Bilateral ties were virtually frozen for seven months. In a message to Putin in June 2016, Erdogan expressed his desire to normalize relations and apologized for the death of the Russian pilot. The Turkish leader also emphasized his readiness to do everything to normalize the traditionally friendly relations between Ankara and Moscow, jointly react to regional crises and fight terrorism.
The process of phased restoration of bilateral relations was launched on June 29, 2016 after a telephone conversation between Putin and Erdogan. The foreign ministers of the two countries held a working meeting in Sochi on July 1, 2016, as a follow-up to the agreements reached by the presidents.
On August 9, 2016, Putin and Erdogan met in the Russian city of St. Petersburg for the first time since the crisis in bilateral relations began. The meeting resulted in Putin and Erdogan expressing their readiness to restore cooperation in all areas.
The leaders of the two countries met on the eve of the G20 summit in the Chinese city of Hangzhou on September 3, 2016, and on the sidelines of the World Energy Congress in Istanbul a month later on October 10.
On December 5-7 that year, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim paid a working visit to Russia, where he held negotiations with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and had an audience with Putin.
The Turkish president paid three working visits to Russia in 2017: on March 10, May 3 and November 13. Putin visited Turkey twice that same year � in September and December. Putin and Erdogan also held brief talks on May 14 on the sidelines of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, as well as on July 8 on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Germany's Hamburg.
This year, Putin visited Turkey on April 3-4. The presidents launched the construction of the first unit of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant (NPP) and took part in a meeting of the High-Level Russian-Turkish Cooperation Council on April, 3.
On April 4, Putin, Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani held a trilateral meeting of the leaders of the guarantor states of the Astana process to promote the Syrian peace process.
On July 9, Medvedev attended the inauguration ceremony of the re-elected Turkish leader.
Another meeting of the presidents of Russia and Turkey was held on July 26 in the South African city of Johannesburg on the sidelines of the BRICS summit. The high-level negations focused on Syrian conflict resolution. Among other international issues, attention was given to the situations in the middle East, Transcaucasia, Central Asia and Ukraine.
Active dialogue is supported by the foreign policy departments.
On March 14, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu held the 6th meeting of the Russian-Turkish Joint Strategic Planning Group.
The next bilateral meeting between the foreign ministers was held on April 28 in Moscow.
On August 2, Lavrov and Cavusoglu met on the sidelines of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) ministerial events in Singapore.
On August 13-14, Lavrov paid a working visit to Ankara. He spoke at the annual meeting of ambassadors and permanent representatives of Turkey to international organizations, and also held talks with his Turkish counterpart.
Cavusoglu paid a short working visit to Moscow on August 4 and met with Putin. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and head of the National Intelligence Organization Hakan Fidan also attended the meeting.
Bilateral relations between Ankara and Moscow are also characterized by interparliamentary relations, and mutual contacts between ministries and departments.
Turkey is one of Russia's main foreign economic partners. In 2017, trade increased by more than 37 percent compared to the previous year, amounting to $21.6 billion. Exports amounted to $18.2 billion, while imports totaled $3.4 billion.
In the first half of 2018, trade between Russia and Turkey amounted to $13.349 billion.
Russian exports consist of energy products, metals and products made of these metals, food and agricultural commodities. Russian imports are mostly food and agricultural commodities, machinery, equipment and transport vehicles, textiles and footwear.
The countries' energy partnership is developing and is a solid foundation for cooperation, primarily in the gas industry. Russia has been a reliable, leading supplier of natural gas to Turkey for many years, providing more than half of its needs for this type of fuel. Supply is determined in accordance with long-term contracts for the Blue Stream and Trans-Balkan gas pipelines.
Russia delivered to Turkey some 29 billion cubic meters (1,024 billion cubic feet) of gas in 2017, which is 17.3 percent more than in 2016. An intergovernmental agreement for a new gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey, TurkStream, was signed in October 2016. The projects envisages the construction of a gas pipeline comprising two legs with a capacity of 15.75 billion cubic meters (556 billion cubic feet) each. The first leg is set to deliver gas across the Black Sea to Turkey. The second leg will transport gas to European countries through Turkey and is scheduled for completion in late 2019.
The sea portion of TurkStream started being laid on May 7, 2017. Russian energy giant Gazprom reported on July 13, 2018 that it had finished building 66 percent of TurkStream's offshore section.
Cooperation in the field of nuclear energy is developing within the framework of the countries' largest joint project � the Akkuyu nuclear power plant. The cost of the project is about $20 billion. Turkey hopes that the first reactor at the NPP would become operational in 2023. Construction for the first unit of the plant started on April 3, 2018.
On September 12, 2017, Moscow and Ankara signed a loan agreement to supply S-400 air defense systems to Ankara. Details of the agreement were not given due to the "specificity and sensitivity of the topic". However, Turkish representatives at the time said that the deliveries were expected to begin within two years.
In 2016, bilateral trade went down in the wake of the downing of the Russian jet. Russia imposed an embargo on the deliveries of certain food products from Turkey from January 1, 2016. The embargo included chilled meat, co-products of chicken and turkey, tomatoes, cucumbers, grape, apples, pears and strawberry. The Russian authorities later lifted the embargo for all Turkish products, except tomatoes. From November 2017, the Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor) permitted the import of tomatoes from three Turkish enterprises previously inspected by Russian experts.
Investment cooperation is another area where bilateral relations were developing. Currently, the mutual investments are more than $10 billion on each side. Turkey, in particular, invests in the wood industry, production of glass and textiles. Russian companies, in turn, are interested in developing Turkish infrastructure related to energy consumption.
Activities of the Russian-Turkish Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation were resumed. The 15th meeting of the commission was held on October 21, 2017 in Kazan.
The process of restoring bilateral relations, which started in mid-2016, has already led to the ban on tour sales to Turkey being lifted. Additionally, a government decree was later adopted to allow charter flights with Turkey to resume.
According to Cavusoglu, about 5 million Russian tourists visited Turkey in 2017.
