Turkish and Russian leaders met in Moscow on April 8 in the latest of a series of summits aiming to boost the bilateral relations and the trade volume between the two countries.

“We are pleased to welcome you to Moscow and today we will open and hold the eighth meeting of the High-Level Cooperation Council,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the beginning of the meeting between him and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“We will discuss our bilateral relations with the representatives of public society and meet with representatives of the business community,” Putin added.

Erdoğan noted that the countries are cooperating in war-torn Syria.

“Another significant step taken with Russia is to cooperate against terrorist acts in Syria,” Erdogan said.

Russia and Turkey have closely coordinated moves on Syria, where they struck a deal in September to create a security zone in the northern province of Idlib. The agreement averted the Syrian army offensive that sparked fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Russia and Turkey have opposed the U.S. military presence in Syria and welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a planned pullout of American troops.

Putin also praised the trade ties between Russia and Turkey.

“We observe and note a good level of development of our relations, the trade turnover grew by 15 percent, the general volume of trade has reached $25 billion dollars,” the Russian president said.

“We are implementing major projects including Akkuyu, a nuclear power plant, that we should launch by 2023 in accordance with the wishes of the Turkish side, and the TurkStream, an offshore section of which was recently completed,” he said.

Putin added that the two countries have a very large amount of cooperation in international relations, between the foreign and defense ministries as well as in the domain of armament.

At the meeting, Turkey is represented by Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and Trade Minister Ruhsar Pekcan. The Russian delegation consists of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Kremlin Aide Yuri Ushakov, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, Energy Minister Alexander Novak and Economic Development Minister Maxim Oreshkin.

The summit was the third of the two leaders in 2019. Last year, Putin and Erdoğan held seven bilateral meetings and participated in a number of international summits.

In addition to Syria, the two leaders discussed issues of regional cooperation, economic cooperation, visa-free travel, and other bilateral, regional and global issues.

Hurriyet Daily News