The interview came after Turkey's Undersecretary for Defense Industries Ismail Demir said that Ankara is ready to discuss the possibility of cooperating to develop a national missile defense system with all countries concerned, including Russia.
In 2009, Turkey announced a 4 billion USD tender for the procurement of components for a missile defense system.
In 2013, the Chinese company CPMIEC, which submitted a bid of $3.4 billion, won the tender, but a range of disputes subsequently occurred between Turkey and China.
In November last year, Turkey officially cancelled the tender and decided to develop a national missile defense project instead.
According to him, "getting more sophisticated weaponry for the development of a more reliable missile defense system is of great importance to Turkey."
"As a result, Russia is also interested in this development because it will be followed by military orders, arms supplies and its maintenance — a very important point. If the joint missile shield is built, we will benefit from it, given that we are interested in protecting our southern borders," Mikhailov said.
At the same time, he said that it is still unclear how the relations between the two countries will develop in terms of missile defense. In any case, it is safe to assume that Turkey is starting to realize who is who, according to Mikhailov.
"The economic factor that was linked to Russia blocking Turkish goods and tourism has led to Turkey to realize the fact that unlike America, Russia is near, and that it is necessary to develop friendly relations with Moscow," he said.
Shortly afterward, Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said that Moscow and Ankara had allegedly agreed to work out the details of a possible project to implement the Turkish national missile defense system project.
However, the Russian President's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on October 11 that the issue of creating a joint missile defense system between Turkey and Russia was not discussed during the high-level talks.
