President Erdoğan: Our main goal is that the Black Sea continues to be a sea of peace, tranquility and cooperation

 

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hold a  joint news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky.

“Our main goal is that the Black Sea continues to be a sea of peace, tranquility and cooperation,” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said at a joint news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky.

“We do not want an escalation of tension in our common geography in any way,” Erdoğan added.

“[During the meeting with the Ukrainian president] we, as Turkey, strongly defended Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” he said.

“We reaffirmed our principled stance of not recognizing the annexation of Crimea,” the president added.

Erdoğan said that Turkey supports the Crimean Platform, the initiative of Ukraine, which aims to bring the international community together on Crimea.

“We hope that this initiative will have positive results for all the Crimean peoples, including the Crimean Tatars, Crimea, and Ukraine in general,” he said.

Erdoğan called for a “peaceful and diplomatic” solution to the ongoing crisis.

“We believe that the current crisis must be resolved through peaceful and diplomatic means, based on the territorial integrity of Ukraine and international law,” he added.

“We hope that the worrying escalation we have observed in the field recently will end as soon as possible, the cease-fire will continue and the conflict will be resolved through dialogue on the basis of MINSK agreements,” he said.