President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan received Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for talks in the capital Ankara, the Presidency's Directorate of Communications announced Friday.
Erdoğan and Lavrov held a closed-door meeting at the Presidential Complex and no further information was released about the meeting but Lavrov met with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu earlier in the day.
The two ministers told a joint news conference that regional issues, the war in Ukraine, the quadrilateral summit on the Syrian crisis, the Ankara-Damascus rapprochement, and peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia dominated their talks.
Çavuşoğlu reiterated Turkey’s hopes for a negotiated end to the war and determination to mediate peace between the sides while Lavrov said they wanted any Ukraine peace talks to focus on creating a "new world order,” emphasizing that “any negotiation needs to be based on considering Russian interests, Russian concerns.”
Çavuşoğlu also expressed Turkey’s heartfelt gratitude to Russia for its quick relief efforts following the Feb. 6 earthquakes, which claimed thousands of lives in Turkey’s southeast. Lavrov is the highest-ranking Russian official to visit Turkey since the earthquakes hit.
