Russian President Vladimir Putin And His Turkish Counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Will Hold Bilateral Talks

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will hold bilateral talks on Tuesday after they attend the International Aviation and Space Salon MAKS-2019 in Zhukovsky, a city in the Moscow region

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 27th August, 2019) Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will hold bilateral talks on Tuesday after they attend the International Aviation and Space Salon MAKS-2019 in Zhukovsky, a city in the Moscow region.

Russian-Turkish relations were established over five centuries ago.

The Embassy of the Russian Empire in Istanbul was opened on a permanent basis in 1701. The Soviet Union and the Ottoman Empire, which is now present-day Turkey, established diplomatic relations on June 2, 1920.

The document outlining modern Russian-Turkish relations, the Treaty on the Principles of Relations between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Turkey, was signed in 1992.

Putin paid the first official visit to Turkey from December 5-6, 2004. After the meeting, the leaders pledged in a joint declaration to develop bilateral relations into an advanced, multifaceted partnership. The following years were characterized by the intensive development of political and economic ties.

After a long period of dynamic development, their cooperation began to deteriorate when the Turkish Air Force downed a Russian military aircraft in Syrian air space on November 24, 2015, which resulted in the pilot being killed by local militants on the ground. Bilateral ties were de facto 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 process of the gradual 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, the leaders met in the Russian city of St. Petersburg for the first time since the eruption of the crisis. 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.

The Turkish president paid three working visits to Russia in 2017: on March 10, May 3 and November 13. Putin visited Turkey twice in 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.

In 2018, Putin and Erdogan held seven meetings: the Russian president paid three working visits to Turkey � in April, October, and November � and the Turkish president paid a working visit to Sochi in September.

The other three meetings were held during several summits throughout that year: one in July in the South African city of Johannesburg on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, another in September in Tehran on the margins of the tripartite summit on Syria in the Astana format and the final in December on the sidelines of the G20 summit in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires.

The next working visit of the Turkish president to Russia took place on January 23, 2019.

On February 14, Sochi hosted the fourth meeting between Russia, Turkey, and Iran regarding Syrian peace. Putin met with Erdogan before the trilateral meeting.

On April 8, Erdogan paid a working visit to Moscow. During the talks, the leaders of the two countries exchanged views on the entire spectrum of Russian-Turkish relations, including the implementation of joint strategic projects in the energy, military, and humanitarian spheres, as well as on pressing regional and international issues. Putin and Erdogan also met with the leading representatives of Russian and Turkish business circles in the Kremlin.

The next meeting of the leaders was held on June 29 on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan's Osaka.

Dialogue between the heads of government and speakers of the two countries' parliaments has intensified. In July 2018, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev paid a working visit to Turkey to attend the inauguration ceremony of the Turkish president.

The active dialogue is being supported by the countries' foreign ministries. From 2018-2019, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu held 15 meetings, with the last one taking place on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) ministerial events in Bangkok on July 30, 2019.

In August 2018, Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin took part in the sixth congress of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party as an honored guest.

In October 2018, Russia, Turkey, and South Korea organized the Third Meeting of Speakers of Eurasian Countries' Parliaments in Antalya.

Volodin held a meeting with Turkish parliamentary speaker Mustafa Sentop on the margins of the 140th Assembly of Inter-Parliamentary Union in Doha, Qatar, in April 2019.

In July 2019, Sentop paid a visit to Moscow, where he took part in the second Development of Parliamentarism International Forum. During the visit, he also held talks with Putin, Volodin and the speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, Valentina Matviyenko.

The bilateral relations between Ankara and Moscow are also characterized by interparliamentary relations, and mutual contacts between ministries and departments, whose leaders meet annually within the framework of the Russian-Turkish commission on trade and economic cooperation and the Russian-Turkish Public Forum.

The Syrian issue occupies a central position in the course of regular top- and high-level contacts. As part of the Syrian settlement efforts, Turkey, Russia, and Iran initiated the Astana process, the Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi, and thereby created conditions to boost the process of political settlement based on the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254. Among other international issues, significant attention is traditionally paid to the situation in the middle East, South Caucasus and Central Asia and Ukraine.

Turkey is one of Russia's main foreign economic partners. In 2018, bilateral trade amounted to $25.5 billion. Russian exports to Turkey amounted to $21.3 billion, while imports totaled $4.2 billion.

In the first six months of 2019, trade between the two countries amounted to $11.9 billion. Russia exported $9.7 billion worth of goods, while imports from Turkey reached a value of $2.2 billion.

Russian exports to Turkey consist of energy products, metals, and food and agricultural commodities. Imports include 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. The deliveries are determined in accordance with long-term contracts for the Blue Stream and Trans-Balkan gas pipelines. In 2018, Russia delivered to Turkey 23.96 billion cubic meters (846 billion cubic feet) of gas.

An intergovernmental agreement on the construction of a new gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey, TurkStream, was signed in October 2016. The project envisages the construction of a gas pipeline comprising of two legs with a capacity of 15.75 billion cubic meters each. The first leg is set to deliver gas across the Black Sea to Turkey. The second leg is set to transport gas to European countries through Turkey.

On November 19, 2018, Gazprom completed the construction of the offshore section of the TurkStream gas pipeline. The section runs for over 930 kilometers (about 580 miles) from the Russkaya compressor station near the resort city of Anapa across the bottom of the Black Sea to the Turkish seaboard. The pipeline comes ashore near the Turkish village of Kiyikoy, some 60 miles west of Istanbul.

The final weld that connects the offshore and the nearshore sections of TurkStream was completed on March 19, 2019. The launch of the first gas pipeline string is scheduled for January 1, 2020.

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 will be launched in 2023.

On September 12, 2017, Moscow and Ankara signed a loan agreement to supply Russia's S-400 air defense systems to Ankara. Details of the agreement were not given due to the "specificity and sensitivity of the topic." Russia completed the first part of the supply of S-400 components to Turkey at the end of July 2019. The deliveries took a total of 30 special flights. According to Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, the delivery of the next shipment of S-400 parts will begin on August 27.

On January 1, 2016, Russia imposed an embargo on a number of products from Turkey in response to the Turkish Air Force's downing of a Russian Su-24 aircraft in Syria. Beginning in the fall of 2016, the restrictions were consistently removed, but the ban on the deliveries of tomatoes, one of the most important products for Turkey, lasted until November 2017.

On May 1, 2018, Russia lifted the restrictions on a number of Turkey's tomato exporters, leaving a total quota for deliveries at 50,000 tonnes per year. At the beginning of 2019, the quota volume was increased to 100,000 tonnes. At the end of 2018, trade in the agricultural sector grew by 7 percent � up to $3 billion.

Russia and Turkey are also actively developing bilateral investment cooperation. Currently, mutual investments are more than $10 billion on each side. Turkey, in particular, invests in the wood industry and the production of glass and textiles. Russian companies, in turn, are interested in developing the Turkish infrastructure related to energy consumption.

In April 2019, the Russian Direct Investment Fund and Turkey Wealth Fund signed an agreement to create an investment platform, the Russia-Turkey Investment Fund, with a capital of $1 billion for investing in promising sectors of the both countries' economies.

Russia and Turkey have also resumed activities of the Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation. Its last meeting was held in July 2019 in Antalya.

The process of restoring bilateral relations, which started in mid-2016, has already led to the withdrawal of the ban on tour sales to Turkey. Additionally, the Russian government adopted a decree to allow the resumption of charter flights to and from Turkey.

According to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, almost 6 million Russian citizens visited Turkey in 2018, which is 28 percent more than was recorded in 2017.

In 2019, Russia and Turkey are holding a series of events under the Cross Year of Culture and Tourism program.