Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan presented a united front at their first meeting since Turkey shot down a Russian plane last year, promising to rapidly rebuild a damaged economic relationship and find a new common policy for solving the Syrian conflict.
"We have gone through a very difficult moment in the relationship between our two countries, but now we would all like to overcome it in the interests of both our peoples,” said the Russian president during a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart in St. Petersburg.
“We want to restore our relationship not only for pragmatic reasons, but in the long-term interests of our countries, and for the sake of promoting good neighborly relations between Russians and Turks.”
