Moscow has communicated its disapproval over the naming of Chechen separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev to a park in a Turkish city via diplomatic channels, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.
"We have already communicated to our Turkish colleagues through diplomatic channels that we, to put it mildly, do not approve of such names in one of the Turkish cities," the Kremlin spokesman said.
Peskov also called the reaction of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov to the event quite understandable. "This is a very and very emotional, but understandable reaction from the head of a Russian region that has experienced several wars, several wars that were provoked, started by terrorists who tried to take control of this region of Russia," the Kremlin spokesman said. He recalled that "one of the terrorists who did this was at one point their leader, Dudayev."
"Recently, unfortunately, in a region of Turkey, one of the parks was named after this terrorist. Of course, this is a very painful decision for all Chechens, for the Chechen Republic within the Russian Federation," Peskov is sure. Therefore, in his opinion, "such an emotional reaction [from Kadyrov] is quite understandable".
On December 21, Kadyrov asked the Russian Foreign Ministry to respond to the actions of the Turkish authorities. Kadyrov also called on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to make up his mind as to whether he is "in favor of transparent and honest relations with the Russian Federation". According to Kadyrov, the current actions of the Turkish authorities pose a direct threat to Russian-Turkish relations and preventive diplomatic measures should be taken to address this issue.
Earlier, the media reported that in mid-December a park was opened in the north-western Turkish town of Korfez named after Dudayev, president of the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, who led the armed resistance after federal troops entered the republic in 1994. Dudayev was assassinated in 1996.
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Photo: Alexander Shcherbak / TASS
Based on materials from TASS