Putin is on a working visit to Ankara, on Thursday, Russian President to meet with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Over years of the conflict in Syria, Russia and Turkey are co-operating very tightly, during the meeting, the leaders will discuss several important issues, among them is NATO, Syria conflict and the weapons.
Both Moscow and Ankara are pushing for the creation of four “de-escalation zones” in Syria to end the civil war that has raged since 2011. This issue will be the centre during the meeting od Putin and Erdogan on Thursday.
Another actual issue is Turkey’s NATO membership, the point is Ankara has signed a deal reportedly worth $2bn to buy S-400 air defence systems from Russia, a move that has shocked its allies in the alliance.
Putin’s visit to Turkey pursues purely pragmatic goals. According to Kremlin’s spokesman, Russia and Turkey have close trade and economic, investment, cultural and military-technical cooperation, and also implement megaprojects.
“Besides, the countries cooperate in ensuring regional security, including in Syria,” he said, adding that the two leaders will “synchronize watches on all these issues.”
Putin and Erdogan: joint efforts in Syrian conflict resolution
The two leaders had a telephone conversation on September 25 to discuss the results of the latest round of the Astana talks on Syria. Apart from that, they raised the issue of Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence referendum.
“This issue was discussed in the telephone conversations,”
Dmitry Peskov confirmed without elaborating. At the same time, the Russian foreign ministry Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that while Moscow supports the territorial integrity of Iraq, it “views the Kurds’ national aspirations with respect”.
