Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during his Middle East tour in May that included stops in Syria and Turkey and his host colleagues agreed to further deepen their mutual bilateral relations. In Damascus, the first official visit by any Russian leader to Syria was devoted to boosting economic cooperation and Middle East conflicts regulation.
Specifically, the leaders mapped out concrete steps to rectify the dwindling trade turnover, which after increasing over 4 times from 2005-08 to $2bln, fell by 30% to $1.2bln in 2009 because of the crisis. The talks in Ankara also focused on economic cooperation and realization of large projects, ‘South Stream’ and ‘Blue Stream-2’, etc. This is because, despite the 40% reduction in trade turnover to $19.6bln, Turkey still remains one of Russia’s main trading partners. Both leaders penned 25 agreements during the visit.
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