The period of visa-free stay for Russian citizens in Turkey has been extended from two to three months. Such a statement was made by the head of the Turkish Foreign Ministry Mevlut Cavusoglu during a meeting with a group of journalists from Russian-language media from 24 countries, reports the Anadolu agency.
According to Cavusoglu, the issue of simplifying the visa regime with Russia was discussed even before the incident with the downed Russian Su-24 aircraft.
In November 2015, after the incident with the Russian Su-24 bomber shot down by the Turkish Air Force, which took part in the military operation in Syria. After that, the relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply, and from January 1, 2016, Russia introduced a visa regime for Turkish citizens, but Ankara did not take retaliatory measures.
At the beginning of March 2017, a meeting was held between the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, during which the issue of Russia's abolition of the visa regime for Turkish citizens was also discussed.
At the end of March 2017, Cavusoglu stated that the airports in Turkey are creating infrastructure to identify tourists arriving from Russia using their Russian internal passports. "Now that our relations are back to normal, we can return to negotiations on this issue," Cavusoglu explained at the time.
