(Bloomberg) -- President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cited Turkey’s reliance on Russian gas supplies and income from its tourists as he ruled out scrapping a purchased Russian missile-defense system, saying his country wants to be friends with both Moscow and Washington.

After meeting Donald Trump in the White House, Erdogan told Turkish reporters on Wednesday that he had expressed his readiness to address the U.S. Congress to ease its concerns over Turkey’s plan to deploy the S-400 missile batteries.

Below are some of his comments:

• “We can’t ruin our relations with Russia. There is a strategic relationship over the natural gas. Do we have a chance to ignore the Turkish Stream gas project? They say ‘you are right but roll tractors over the S-400s.’ We said it is not possible to do such a thing.”
• “Last year, 6.5 million Russian tourists visited Turkey. Our bilateral trade is heading toward $30 billion. We can’t dump S-400s and go for Patriots. But we said let’s buy Patriots as we buy the S-400s because we have the intention to build a multi-dimensional defense system.”
• “I said I don’t want to create an enemy. I want both America and Russia be my friends. We’re taking our steps accordingly and that’s disturbing them.”
• “The way to overcome differences of views is to remain in a healthy dialogue based on correct information. We will continue our work in this without interruption.”

--With assistance from Selcan Hacaoglu.

To contact the reporter on this story: Firat Kozok in Ankara at fkozok@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams

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