Komsomolskaya Pravda: "Moscow and Ankara to abolish visas"
As early as summer
After a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev, the Turkish Prime Minister headed for the Russian government Reception House for talks with Vladimir Putin. This, their tenth meeting in the last five years, was, as usual, marked by an atmosphere of mutual trust, as Mr. Putin noted.
The two men discussed in detail a whole range of bilateral issues and international problems. They agreed to bring the volume of trade to a record $100 billion by 2015. Russia is already Turkey’s biggest trading partner.
The key cooperation sector is energy. Some Western countries want Turkey to allow for alternate routes for supplying Europe with hydrocarbons that bypass Russia. The irony is that the Turks themselves import plenty of Russian product (we provide almost 70% of Turkey’s gas). Therefore, both Putin and Erdogan stressed they would pay close attention to such joint projects as South Stream and Blue Stream-2 gas pipelines and the Samsun-Ceyhan oil pipeline. The Russian Prime Minister said that Moscow would submit environmental, geological, and technical feasibility studies for the pipeline to Ankara by November. Russia is also prepared to build a nuclear power plant in Turkey.
There was some good news for Russian tourists (incidentally, almost 2.5 million Russians visited Turkey in the crisis year of 2009). The two countries agreed to phase out the visa regime. Prime Minister Erdogan stressed that the process would not take long and may be completed by early June.
Andrei Baranov
