MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS/. Russian-Turkish cooperation for the settling of the Syrian crisis has helped root terrorists out from a vast part of Syria and prevent the country’s collapse, Russian Federation Council (upper house) Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said at the meeting with Speaker of Turkey’s Grand National Assembly (parliament) Mustafa Sentop on Tuesday.
"A serious factor in international relations is our cooperation with Iran aimed at solving Syria’s problems and establishing political dialogue to iron out the crisis in the country. The efforts of Russia and Turkey have helped clean a large part of Syria’s territory of terrorists, preserve the country’s sovereignty and prevent Syria’s collapse upon the Libyan or Iraqi scenarios," Matviyenko said.
According to Matviyenko, the intense political dialogue between the two countries’ leaders sets the tone for the entire Russian-Turkish relationship. The upper house speaker recalled that over the past six months, the Russian and Turkish presidents have met five times and their latest meeting was held in Japan’s Osaka on the G20 summit’s sidelines. "Our leaders ‘keep their fingers on the pulse’ in major areas of bilateral cooperation and give particular instructions and take certain decisions," she noted.
Matviyenko stressed that the goal of the Russian and Turkish parliaments is to ensure a legal basis for all the agreements reached at the highest level.