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Russian political scientists comment on Erdoganâ€™s visit to Moscow â€“ OPINION POLL

Russian political scientists comment on Erdoganâ€™s visit to Moscow â€“ <font color=red>OPINION POLL </font>

13 January 2010 16:02 (UTC +04:00)

Moscow. Roman Aghayev â€“ APA. Russian political scientists highly valued Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoganâ€™s visit to Moscow, but they donâ€™t expect any significant decision about the issues to be discussed in the high level.

Deputy Director of the Strategic Cultural Foundation Andrei Areshev told APAâ€™s Moscow correspondent that it needs to review the Turkish Prime Ministerâ€™s visit to Russia as against the background of the countryâ€™s active foreign policy course. â€œOne of the limited parts of this policy is close political-diplomatic relations with Russia. Today negotiations on wide range of bilateral issues, particularly energy cooperation, are on agenda, because Turkey introduces itself as a regional distributor on energy resources and transportation networks. Everyone knows about the oil and gas projects carried out in the region with participation of the South Caucasian countries, particularly Azerbaijan. Russia is a close partner to Turkey in this process, because realization of the Turkeyâ€™s ambitions mostly depends on Russian transportation opportunitiesâ€. Areshev said there were series of common interests between the two countries. â€œRussia is interested in the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations, but this issue doesnâ€™t depend completely on the prime ministers of both countries because both countries have an important institution like parliament and difficult domestic situationâ€.

Director General of the effective Policy Foundation Kirill Tanayev told APA that the expectations from the Turkish Prime Ministerâ€™s visit to Russia is the continuation of the constructive dialogue on the energy issues, security problems in the South Caucasus, transit of energy resources.
â€œThe settlement of the conflicts in the South Caucasus and Armenia-Turkey protocols are the issues covering the process of long-lasting negotiations. I do not doubt that these issues will be discussed in Moscow, but it is no use to expect concrete decision concerning these issues, as it is still early,â€ he said.
The political analyst did not rule out the link between Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrovâ€™s visit to Yerevan and Erdoganâ€™s visit to Moscow.

Director General of the Center for Post-Soviet Studies Aleksey Vlasov considers that coincidence of Erdoganâ€™s visit to Moscow and Sergei Lavrovâ€™s visit to Yerevan can not be considered a chance event.
â€œI think the link between these events is obvious both in terms of the prospect of opening of the borders between Armenia and Turkey and in terms of necessity to force Armenia to more efficient steps for the settlement of the conflict with Azerbaijan. The positions of Moscow and Ankara coincide in this issue. It is true that Moscow has never even formally stated that the opening of the borders and settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict are parallel processes, but the Kremlinâ€™s logic shows that the normalization of Turkey-Armenia relations, real steps for the liberation of the occupied Azerbaijani territories, determination of the status of Nagorno Karabakh are very important for Russia,â€ he said.