In September, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin together inaugurated the newly built Moscow Cathedral Mosque in central Moscow.
The two countries were already having serious disagreements on the Syrian crisis and the status of President Bashar al-Assad. But Turkey and Russia already had opposing views on Syria, Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula but had managed to keep their disputes away from their substantive economic relations. When Russia was faced with US and EU embargoes, it opened its markets to Turkish firms, especially in foodstuffs.