Turkey to Host Friendly Football Match With Russia to Restore Broken Ties

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Turkey will host Russia for the first friendly football match before the qualifications for the 2018 World Cup, in order to repair the bilateral relations which deteriorated in late 2015 after Turkey downed a Russian Su-24 jet, media reported Thursday.

According to the Daily Sabah, in addition to hosting the friendly match, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to invite his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to watch the game, as an extra effort to mend the strained ties.

The Russian and Turkish presidents are expected to meet on August 9 in St. Petersburg for the first time since the bilateral relations deteriorated.

Turkey and Russia ended seven months of tension in late June when Erdogan wrote a letter to Putin in which he apologized for the downing of a Russian Su-24 attack aircraft by a Turkish jet in November 2015 over Syria and extended his condolences to the family of the pilot killed in the incident.

By apologizing for the incident, Ankara fulfilled Moscow’s condition for restoring the long-term partnership between the two countries. Erdogan also said in the letter that a legal case had been opened against the Turkish citizen suspected of involvement in the death of the downed plane’s pilot, which was another precondition for the normalization of relations. Putin subsequently lifted the ban on charter flights to Turkey and instructed the government to negotiate a revival of trade with Ankara.

The 2018 FIFA World Cup will be held from June 14 to July 15 in 11 Russian cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi and Volgograd.