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Hopes for early changes in Turkey's current destructive role futile — diplomat

"The Turkish authorities are moving up the spiral of fanning the situation" and one may get an impression they are seeking to restore "the past might of the Ottoman Empire," Maria Zakharova said
Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova Mikhail Japaridze/TASS
Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova
© Mikhail Japaridze/TASS

MOSCOW, May 4. /TASS/. Any hopes for early changes in the Turkish government's current destructive position in the international arena should be perished, believes Maria Zakharova, the official spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"The Turkish authorities are moving up the spiral of fanning the situation" and one may get an impression they are seeking to restore "the past might of the Ottoman Empire," she said in an interview the daily Izvestia published on Wednesday.

"What could I possibly say about Turkey? We exercised patience for a very long time although we were perfectly aware of the policies the Turkish government was conducting, including the policies towards Crime and the Syrian peace settlement," she said.

Russia did everything in its power to resolve the differences with Turkey through negotiations, Zakharova said.

"Unfortunately, all of it bumps into the incumbent Turkish government," she indicated. "There's an impression it is striving to restore the previous might of the Ottoman Empire in one way or another, or at least that's the picture all the elements of its current policies combine into."

"All of us known what kind of a finale the Ottoman Empire ended up in," she said. "Unfortunately, we can see an absolutely destructive role of the Turkish government on every track, be it Crimea, Syria, refugees, terrorism, ethnic problems, and so on."

The crux of the matter stands apart from Russia's position. "The problem is there's no hoping for any early changes in Ankara's position because it is moving exactly up the spiral of greater tensions. Everything it does only intensifies this destructiveness."

Relations between Russia and Turkey deteriorated after November 24, 2015, when a Turkish fighter jet brought down a Russian Sukhoi-24M bomber engaged in the antiterrorist operation in Syria, which Ankara claims violated the Turkish airspace in an area adjoining the Turkish-Syrian border.

President Vladimir Putin described the Turkish attack on the jet that did not pose any threat to Turkey as a stab in Russia's back.