Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 2
By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:
An eight-hour meeting between Russian and Turkish Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara can be considered as a significant action in strengthening the economic relations between the two countries.
The sides signed eight documents during the meeting. Moreover, Putin said that Russia will provide Turkey with a 6 percent discount for gas supplied to the country from January 1, 2015.
At the same time, President Putin said that the amount of the discount can be increased in the future.
Despite the fact that the discount on the supplied gas is extremely important for Ankara, Turkey's reaction was rather ambiguous. Some circles in Ankara are sure that a discount on gas was provided by Russia in exchange for Turkey's concessions on issues of Crimea and the Crimean Tatars.
Moreover, Turkey's Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning approved the project for construction of Akkuyu nuclear power plant in Turkey by the Russian side, which became one of the most important highlights of Putin's visit to this country. It is noteworthy that the project was approved two hours after Putin started his visit to Turkey.
The regional cooperation issues and settlement of Syrian crisis were also discussed during the meeting of Russian and Turkish presidents. During the meeting, Erdogan said that both Russia and Turkey are aware of the need to settle the Syrian crisis, however, they have disagreements over the ways of resolving this problem.
Naturally, both Russia and Turkey are concerned about the increase of terrorism threat in the region and therefore have confidence that both countries will be fighting against the terrorist organization known as the 'Islamic State' by using their own approaches and methods. Russia and Turkey will be fighting against the 'Islamic State' without recourse to arms, through the exchange of intelligence information.
The High-Level Russian-Turkish Cooperation Council is indispensable in terms of beneficial economic partnership. However, we can predict that the dialogue between Turkey and Russia regarding resolution to the Syrian crisis will be ineffective.
Otherwise, Erdogan wouldn't make a statement about Iran's responsibility to solve the Syrian problem, which it bears together with Russia and Turkey.
The protracted Syrian crisis clearly demonstrated that countries that had hoped for a speedy fall of the Syrian regime had to change their policy towards this country in light of the support given to it by Iran.
Many people expected the presidents of Russia and Turkey would make a statement on the situation on the South Caucasus after the meeting, but Erdogan limited himself to the phrase that the development of relations between Ankara and Moscow would serve as an impetus for the establishment of peace in the region.
Meanwhile, since the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is another one of the problems of the region, which requires immediate solution one can confidently assume that the parties touched upon this issue as well during the meeting. After all, absolute stability in the region is impossible without settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict restoring the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
Edited by CN
Rufiz Hafizoglu is the head of the Trend Agency Arabic news service
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