Azernews.Az

By Gunay Hasanova

The August 9 meeting between the Russian and Turkish leaders has moved the Ankara-Moscow ties to a new positive phase and served as a ‘clean slate’ between the two states.

Different aspects of further cooperation in the spheres of energy, trade and investment were discussed at the meeting.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, commenting on results of his visit to Russia, said that Turkey and Russia can use their own national currencies in mutual trade, Haberturk newspaper reported on August 12.

Erdogan believes that the use of national currencies in trade instead USD will benefit both Russia and Turkey.

The Turkish side seeks to increase the trade turnover with Russia up to a record figure – $100 billion.

Erdogan made this statement on the results of negotiations with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg.

“We reached the trade turnover of $35 billion, but after the November 2015 events it dropped to $28 billion, then even lower. We have such a mechanism as the higher level of cooperation, which involves the strategic cooperation between the two countries”, said Erdogan “We had a goal to achieve the turnover of $100 billion. It is topical and we again want to achieve it with the help of this mechanism.”

The trade turnover between Turkey and Russia amounted to $8 billion in 1H2016, while this figure was $10-11 billion in the same period of 2015.

In turn, President Putin said that a session of the intergovernmental commission on trade and economic relations with Turkey will take place in 2016.

“We have to work hard to reanimate trade and economic relations, particularly, to pay attention to increasing investments, trade flows, implementation of promising projects”, he noted.

Moreover, Russian President stressed that a separate meeting regarding the trade and economic relations with Turkey will be held in autumn 2016.

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