UPDATE - 'Turkey ready to help defuse Pakistan, India tension'

ADDS MORE REMARKS FROM PRESIDENT

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey is ready to do its part to de-escalate tension between Pakistan and India, said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday.

Escalating tension between India and Pakistan helps no one, Erdogan told a campaign rally in Trabzon, in Turkey’s Black Sea region.

Erdogan also hailed Pakistan’s move in handing over an Indian pilot downed in the recent tension, adding that he looks forward to seeing similar steps from India.

On Friday, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, an Indian pilot who became the face of escalating conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors, was handed over to Indian authorities by Pakistan.

Varthaman had been held in Pakistan after his aircraft was downed on Wednesday in a dogfight with Pakistani jets along the de facto Kashmir border.

A day later, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan announced his release in a widely hailed gesture of goodwill.

Earlier today, Erdogan announced a new drillship, the Yavuz, will begin exploring for oil in the Mediterranean Sea after its maintenance work is completed.

Turkey's first drillship, the Fatih, started its first deep drilling offshore Antalya on the county's southern Mediterranean coast last October.

The country's first seismic vessel, the Barbaros Hayrettin Pasa, bought from Norway in 2013, has been doing exploration in the Mediterranean since April 2017.

Its second vessel, the MTA Oruc Reis, which Turkish engineers built in a local shipyard in Istanbul last June, is doing work in the Black Sea.