Turkey

ANTALYA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey and Armenia have agreed to press ahead with efforts to establish diplomatic relations “without conditions” and continue the normalization efforts that could lead to the reopening of their shared borders for trade, their foreign ministers said Saturday.

Ararat Mirzoyan met with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, on the sidelines of a diplomacy forum near the Turkish Mediterranean city of Antalya during a rare visit to Turkey.

12 March 2022; MEMO: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the situation in Ukraine has revealed major problems within the United Nations (UN) Security Council. Erdogan noted: "If the world had objected to the occupation of Ukraine in 2014, would we be facing the current outlook? Those who were silent on Crimea in 2014 now speak up, is justice valid only for a part of the world?" referring to Moscow's unilateral annexation of Crimea.

11 March 2022; MEMO: Senior officials from Afghanistan, Qatar and the US held a trilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum (ADF) that kicked off in Turkiye on Friday Anadolu News Agency reports.

Afghanistan's acting Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, met Qatar's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani, and Tom West, US special representative for Afghanistan, read an Afghan Foreign Ministry statement.

ANKARA, March 11. /TASS/: Attacks on Russian cultural figures are unacceptable, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the opening ceremony of a diplomatic forum in Antalya on Friday.

"Fascistic actions against people of Russian descent and Russian cultural figures living in the Western world are completely unacceptable. Look at the situation where a philharmonic orchestra director gets fired in Germany as a friend of Putin’s? Is it nonsense? They are banning Dostoevsky's works. Is it nonsense?" Erdogan said.

ANKARA, March 11. /TASS/: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday said the time has come to reform the United Nations.

"The system where the fate of the 193 UN member countries is determined by five countries is unfair," he said. "The system needs to be reformed again."

"When we say that the world is more than five countries, we are trying to protect the rights and shared interests of all humanity," Erdogan continued. "We don’t do it in pursuit of the interests of our country alone."

10 March 2022; MEMO: Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, arrived in Turkiye's southern city of Antalya yesterday ahead of tripartite talks with his Turkish and Ukrainian counterparts.

More than 330 journalists from dozens of countries will cover the upcoming meeting, most notably Russia, Ukraine, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Israel, amid strict security measures imposed by Turkey.

10 March 2022; MEMO: Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan, told US President, Joe Biden, in a phone call on Thursday that it was past time to lift all "unjust" sanctions on Turkey's defence industry, Reuters reports.

According to a statement from Erdogan's office, he also told Biden that Turkey expected its request to purchase 40 new F-16 fighter jets and modernise its existing fleet to be finalised as soon as possible.

ANTALYA, March 10. /TASS/: The statement by UK Foreign Minister Liz Truss that Russia could attack the Baltic states and Moldova is an example of a British fake, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday following talks with Ukrainian and Turkish foreign ministers Dmitry Kuleba and Mevlut Cavusoglu.

ANTALYA /Turkey/, March 10. /TASS/: Moscow has never wanted war and seeks to end the current conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference following a meeting with his Ukrainian and Turkish counterparts, Dmitry Kuleba and Mevlut Cavusoglu.

He pointed out that Moscow was ready to discuss security guarantees for Kiev, did not rule out the possibility of a meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine and did not expect a conflict involving nuclear weapons to break out.

10 March 2022; MEMO: Turkey will continue to buy Russian oil and gas, the country's Deputy Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said yesterday.

Ankara relies on Russia for 45 per cent of its demand for natural gas, 17 per cent for oil and 40 per cent for gasoline, Bayraktar explained.

"The world needs more oil. It should come from somewhere, from the US, from Venezuela, from Iran, Saudi Arabia, or from anywhere we want," he noted.