Hours after the Russian Defense Ministry reported an incident in the northern Aegean Sea, Turkey's Foreign Minister declared that it is "not in favor of tension."
On Sunday, Russia claimed one of its ships -- the destroyer Smetlivy -- fired a warning shot to avoid a collision with a Turkish fishing vessel 22 kilometers from Greece's Lemnos Island.
"We have read the Russian statement," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told reporters in Rome, where he had been following an international conference on Libya.
"But we are always saying: ‘We are not in favor of tension.' We are in favor of overcoming tension through dialogue," Çavuşoğlu added, claiming that Turkey's initiatives following "the sad event of Nov. 24 [the downing of a Russian warplane] had always been in that direction."
Sunday's incident comes at a time when tension between Ankara and Moscow remains high following the Turkish F-16s' downing of a Russian Su-24 aircraft near the Turkish-Syrian border.
On Sunday, Çavuşoğlu also confirmed that he had a brief, informal meeting with Russian Federation Council chairwoman, Valentina Matvienko. The pair met on Saturday on the sidelines of an international conference in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
"We met while walking and it was good," Çavuşoğlu said, adding that: "We have expressed the wish to overcome the current situation [between the two countries]."Furthermore, a Russian Black Sea corvette and a coast guard boat have forced a commercial vessel under a Turkish flag to change course after it got in the way of a Crimean energy firm's boat towing oil rigs, the company said on Monday. The firm, Chernomorneftegaz, said the rigs were delivered to safety.
"There is no reason to halt the planned Akkuyu nuclear power plant with Russia," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said on Monday, responding to last week's reports that Russia had stopped construction work.
The proposed $20 billion project would be Turkey's first nuclear power plant. The outcome, however, has grown complicated amidst the deteriorating relations between Moscow and Ankara after the downing of a Russian warplane which was skirting the Turkish border last month.
