Meeting with President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Meeting with President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Ahead of the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China, Vladimir Putin had a meeting with President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the restoration of full-scale bilateral cooperation.

September 3, 2016

18:35

Hangzhou

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With President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, it is a pleasure to have another meeting with you, this time here, in China. I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss the implementation of the agreements we made during your visit to Russia, to St Petersburg.

During our last telephone conversation, you noted that the decisions are not being implemented as fast as we would like. In particular, you said that the agreements on restoring charter flights have not been fulfilled.

As you see, on August 28, the Russian Government signed the approrpiate directive, and yesterday the first charter flight brought Russian tourists to Turkey. We saw that our tourists received a warm welcome there.

Of course, a great deal has to be done to restore full-scale cooperation in all areas. This is what we are going to talk about today.

President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan (retranslated): First, I would like to thank you. Indeed, the charter flights have resumed, and the first flight arrived yesterday.

Today we will have a follow-up to the St Petersburg meeting. Here we shall consider all the issues that were discussed there, both political and economic ones – we will assess and consider all the aspects, all the issues.

We will have an opportunity to discuss an energy-related matter, because there has been some progress in that area. I am confident that some steps that we will have to make will help us to advance further in that area, and will contribute specifically to the development of these relations.

Let me take the opportunity to thank you once again.

Vladimir Putin: You see what a powerful delegation I have brought with me. These are our ministers, heads of the largest energy companies: we have Gazprom, Rosneft and Rosatom here, the Energy Minister, the head of our Investment Fund, and the Economy Minister , while our Foreign Ministers will try to outdo each other in eloquence while we listen to them.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan: I have also brought a substantial team along. Accompanying me are the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of economic issues, the Foreign Minister, the Economy Minister, the head of our country’s intelligence service, and some other colleagues.

Vladimir Putin: If the head of intelligence is here, we have nothing to talk about – he must have already briefed you on everything (laughter).

We are happy that political life in Turkey is coming back to normal. We can see that Turkey is going through disturbing times; it is fighting terrorism and facing grave terrorist crimes.

We have stated number of times our stand on fighting terror. I am certain that you are doing it successfully, but when the situation in the country is completely normalised, we will be able to make headway along the path of our interaction.

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