TBILISI (Sputnik) — The United States expects that its military cooperation with Turkey will not be affected by warming in relations between Moscow and Ankara, a US senator and a deputy head of the US delegation to the OSCE PA told Sputnik Friday.
"Let us understand what normalization of ties between Turkey and Russia means, the substance of it. Turkey is a valuable ally of the United States militarily. We expect that not to change. It is understandable that two neighboring nations want to have best relations possible but I think it is not quite certain exactly what that means in terms of policy going forward in short term and long term," Rodger Wicker, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said.
Relations between Russia and Turkey deteriorated when the Russian Su-24 attack aircraft was shot on November 24, 2015, by a Turkish fighter near the Turkish border in Syria. Following the incident, Moscow imposed a number of restrictive measures on Turkey and has repeatedly said that Ankara should apologize for downing the plane.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a letter addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, apologized for the downing of the Russian Su-24 aircraft and extended his condolences to the family of the pilot killed in the incident.
