Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, met in New York on Monday before a United Nations Security Council meeting on the crisis in the Middle East, the Turkish Foreign Ministry announced.
The ministry shared a photo from the meeting on X on Tuesday but provided no details about the content of the talks.
The Russian Foreign Ministry, however, said on its Telegram account that the ministers exchanged views on a number of international issues and agreed on the need to coordinate the two countries’ actions in order to find mutually acceptable solutions to acute regional problems, primarily with regard to the situation in the Gaza Strip, Syria and the Middle East as a whole as well as in the Black Sea region and the South Caucasus.
The Russian ministry also said the ministers agreed on the importance of continuing to work together to maintain and further expand mutually beneficial ties in addition to discussing the progress of key Russian-Turkish projects in the energy sector and talking about the schedule of upcoming bilateral visits.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in December that he might visit Turkey in early 2024.
“We’re making arrangements. This visit [to Turkey] may take place at the beginning of next year,” Putin was quoted as saying by Russian news agency Interfax following an end-of-year press conference.
The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, will be discussed at the UN Security Council meeting today.
Fidan is set to address the gathering and is likely to have bilateral meetings with other counterparts later in the day.
There have been renewed tensions in the Middle East, sparked by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, which left almost 1,200 people dead. Israel has been pounding the Palestinian enclave of Gaza since then. More than 25,000 civilians have so far been killed in the Israeli air and ground strikes, according to the local health ministry.
Turkey, which does not see Hamas as a terrorist organization, accuses Israel of committing “genocide” and “war crimes” in Gaza.