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Russian Presidents Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged on Wednesday (March 10, 2021) to strengthen cooperation between their countries when the workshop to build a new reactor at Turkey’s first nuclear facility was launched.
Both leaders lobbied their offices in Moscow and Ankara during a video conference ceremony during which they launched the third phase of the Akkuyu plant construction project. Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear power corporation, began construction work on the first of four planned reactors, on Turkey’s southern coast, in 2018.
Erdogan hopes the facility’s operation will begin with Turkey’s resurgence of the republic’s century-old founding after the Ottoman era in 2023.
Putin said he hopes the project will “strengthen the Russian-Turkish partnership in all its aspects and help strengthen friendship and mutual understanding between the peoples of our two countries.” Erdogan expressed similar views.
The Turkish president said: “The close dialogue we had with my respected friend (Putin) plays an important role not only in bilateral relations, but also in the preservation of regional peace and stability.”
Putin and Erdogan have had a complex relationship during the leadership of their countries for most of the last twenty years. And if they support different parties on both sides of the war in Syria, they are now working closely on the Sochi track with Iran to end a decade of conflict.
Relations between them plummeted to an all-time low when Turkish forces shot down a Russian fighter jet near the Syrian border in November 2015. But relations quickly improved and Putin attended the launch ceremony of the reactor construction site. Akkuyu in April 2018.
Also read: Russia and Turkey … temporary cooperation or strategic alliance?
Russian press reports estimate that the entire project will cost about $ 20 billion (€ 17 billion). Turkey is highly dependent on imports of oil and natural gas, including from Russia.
Erdogan said he expects the facility to provide 10 percent of Turkey’s electricity needs when construction works are completed.
AA / AH (AFP)
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