By Vestnik Kavkaza
Recent mass protests in Turkey didn’t influence the tourist flow into the country from Russia. Yesterday Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Turkey to the Russian Federation, Aydin Adnan Sezgin, stated about it at a press conference. According to him, Russian tourists are approximately 11.5% of 32 million tourists, which is about 3.5 to 3.6 million, who visited the country last year To date, their expectations of the number of Russian tourists to Turkey this year are 4,000,000.
In general the ambassador believes that “relations between Russia and Turkey are at the highest level. They moved into a phase of strategic relations. Trade turnover is about $35 billion. Leaders of both countries have identified $100 billion as a target figure, and we hope that soon we will reach that mark. Turkey is the second-largest client of "Gazprom". Over time, this position could be further strengthened. Mutual investments of Turkish businessmen in Russia and Russian businessmen in Turkey are approximately 10 billion dollars.”
At the same time, in the political sphere positions of Ankara and Moscow sometimes differ. One of such problems is the Syrian conflict. According to Aydın Adnan Sezgin, “Syria is definitely going through a human drama. This human drama is compounded by the fact that Syria will not let an investigation team enter its territory; the team was organized by the United Nations. In addition to a real human tragedy there, this whole situation greatly affects the stability of the region as a whole. Also, there are prerequisites for the strengthening of radical forces. Of course, such an enhancement of radical groups in any way is not in the interests of either Turkey or Syria or Russia. Turkey would not like Al-Qaeda, with which Turkey once fought in Afghanistan, to gain forces.”
Ankara believes that the Geneva-2 should open some opportunities for solutions. “In particular, it is believed that it is necessary to transfer all powers to a transitional authority, which will function perfectly with absolute power. That is, it is necessary to ensure the creation of a transitional government, which shall have full power in the country. It is imperative that such a government is established that will reflect the interests of all groups of the population in this country that was always multicultural and had a large variety of religious groups. In such a case, you can make a step towards the creation of some more or less certain future approved by all the Syrians. But now the picture just seems quite pessimistic. On the one hand, foreign armed groups are fighting; on the other hand, the government is shooting civilians with heavy weapons. Still, diplomacy has certain powers. And as a diplomat I still have not exhausted my belief that a solution to this problem is possible by political and diplomatic means. Turkey is now working to prepare for the Geneva-2 trying to do everything in its power to make an impact on the opposition and work with the opposition in this direction.”
