Turkey and Russia have not only returned to the pre-crisis level of bilateral relations but managed to establish new goals in development of the contacts, the Turkish Ambassador to Russia Huseyin Dirioz said during a press conference at the Rossiya Segodnya Agency.
"The main thing is that we have left the concept of ‘normalizing’ our relations in the past, and not only have our relations returned to the pre-crisis level, but we have established specific goals to develop them," Sputnik cited Dirioz as saying.
The previous HLCC meeting took place in December 2014, but was followed by a deterioration of relations after the November 2015 downing of a military Russian aircraft by the Turkish Air Force over Syria. In June, tensions began to thaw since the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan apologized in a letter to the Russian president for the incident and offered his condolences to the family of the killed Russian pilot.
