As of: March 1, 2024, 5:14 p.m
By: Erkan Pehlivan
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov traveled to Turkey for a conference.
He will also meet with President Erdogan.
Antalya – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov traveled to Turkey on Friday (March 1) to take part in the “Antalya Diplomacy Forum”.
On the sidelines of the two-day conference, Lavrov met with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan.
According to the Russian news agency TASS,
the topic of the conversation was
“the most important aspects of the international agenda, including the situation in the Middle East, North Africa and the Black Sea region.”
The agency had previously also said that there were a wide range of other topics of discussion between the two countries, including trade, energy, security, banking and tourism.
Russia and Türkiye have similar positions on the Gaza war
Both countries have similar positions in the Gaza war.
“It goes without saying that our top priority is to end the bloodshed.
We have been working on this since the first days after the attack on October 7, 2023.
We condemned the attack.
But it is unacceptable to respond with collective punishment of the Palestinians,” Lavrov said during his speech to Palestinian politicians on Thursday.
Erdogan also calls for his own Palestinian state and goes one step further.
“What is happening in Gaza is not a war.
This is genocide,” Erdogan said during his speech at the Diplomacy Forum Antalya.
Preparation for Putin's visit to Turkey
Lavrov will also meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
It will also be about President Vladimir Putin's visit to Ankara.
The Russian president's visit to Turkey is scheduled to take place after the local elections on March 31st.
The last one-on-one conversation between Putin and Erdogan took place in September 2023 in Putin's vacation home in the Russian Black Sea town of Sochi.
Turkey will be the first NATO member that Putin will visit since Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine began in February 2022.
The foreign ministers of Russia and Turkey at a meeting in Antalya.
© IMAGO
Türkiye helps Russia circumvent Western sanctions
Erdogan has relations with both Russia and Ukraine.
According to the Munich Ifo Institute, Russia is circumventing a large part of the sanctions on Western goods via former Soviet republics and Turkey.
As the research institute said, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey exported 50 times more goods to Russia that are critical to the Russian economy or important for the military industry in 2022 than they exported general goods to all destination countries in 2019.
“This indicates a very high probability of evasion of sanctions,” explained Ifo foreign trade expert Feodora Teti.
On the other hand, Turkey sells weapons to Ukraine.
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Türkiye faces penalties for evading sanctions against Russia
However, relations with Russia are a thorn in the side of the West because Ankara ignores Western sanctions.
Washington and its European allies had therefore called on Turkey to take measures to restrict trade.
Turkey is threatened with further penalties for violating sanctions against Russia.
The first punitive measures against Turkey have already been taken.
(erpe/dpa/AFP)