Turkey-Russia Relations ‘Returned to Pre-Crisis Level’: Turkish Ambassador

Turkey and Russia have not only returned to the pre-crisis level of bilateral relations but managed to establish new goals in development of the contacts, Turkish Ambassador to Russia Huseyin Dirioz said on Monday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Moscow on March 10.

“I believe, the main thing is that we have left the concept of ‘normalizing’ our relations in the past, and not only have our relations returned to the pre-crisis level, but we have established specific goals to develop them [the relations],” Dirioz said during a press conference at the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency.

Erdogan visited Moscow for the Russia-Turkey High-Level Cooperation Council (HLCC), co-chaired by him and Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Friday. The sides signed a number of documents, including a 2017–2020 mid-term trade, economic, scientific, technical and cultural cooperation program, several memorandums of understanding and an agreement to set up a joint investment fund.

The previous HLCC meeting took place in December 2014, but was followed by a deterioration of relations after the November 2015 downing of a military Russian aircraft by the Turkish Air Force over Syria.

In June, tensions began to thaw since the Turkish president apologized in a letter to the Russian president for the incident and offered his condolences to the family of the killed Russian pilot.