Before meeting with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said that at present relations between Ukraine and Turkey are friendly, partnership and strategic.

In Istanbul, President Petro Poroshenko, together with representatives of the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar community in Turkey, opened a memorial plaque on the building of the former UPR diplomatic mission in 1919-1922, the presidential press service said on Saturday.

The president stressed that relations between Ukraine and Turkey are now friendly, partnership and strategic.

He also thanked Turkey for its absolutely firm support for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine. "We are pleased that Turkey will never recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea," the president said.

He also noted that he had the honor to begin an official visit to the Republic of Turkey from this symbolic place, where the Embassy of the Ukrainian People's Republic was opened 100 years ago.

"It is very important that the Embassy in Istanbul was opened by one of the first diplomatic missions of the Ukrainian People's Republic. It is very important that the Ottoman Empire at that time had an absolutely firm position in recognition of the UPR, the empire was one of the first to recognize it," Poroshenko said during an official ceremony.

The president thanked the Ukrainian Embassy and Consulate, who carried out a lot of research work, expressed gratitude to the Turkish partners who helped open the plaque and the Spanish partners in cooperation with which all the necessary permissions were received in order to be able to honor the memory of the Ukrainian Embassy.

On February 9, 1918, the Ottoman Empire signed the Brest Peace Treaty, recognizing the Ukrainian People's Republic as an independent and sovereign state. This treaty was ratified on August 22, 1918. The Ukrainian state and the Ottoman Empire opened diplomatic missions on a mutual basis.