Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the Russian president’s criticism of his country’s downing of a Russian warplane on Tuesday is “unacceptable”. President Erdogan warned Vladimir Putin not to “play with fire” over the incident, in a televised speech.
BBC
But he insisted that Turkey did not want to damage its relationship with Russia.
The Turkish president said he hoped to meet Mr Putin on the sidelines of the climate summit in Paris next week.
`I would like to meet [Mr Putin] face-to-face in Paris,” he said. “I would like to bring the issue to a reasonable point. We are disturbed that the issue has been escalated.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday warned that Turkey had gone too far by shooting down the warplane, and said the incident could severely undermine Turkey’s interests.
“We believe that the Turkish leadership has crossed the line of what is acceptable,” he said at the start of talks with Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem in Moscow.
Russia says a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down one of its SU-24 bombers over Syria on Tuesday. Turkey says the bomber violated its airspace.
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The plane crashed into a mountainside in a rebel-held area close to the Turkish border.
One of the two Russian pilots was killed by gunfire as he parachuted from the burning jet. The other pilot was rescued by Russian and Syrian special forces.
Tensions have sharply escalated between the Ankara and Moscow over the incident, with Russian President Vladimir Putin warning of “serious consequences”.
Turkey was reported to have suspended air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria as part of “a mutual decision taken with Russia, which has also halted its aerial campaign near the Turkish border”.
IS has claimed the 13 November attacks in Paris which killed 130 people, and a group’s affiliate has said it bombed a Russian passenger plane in October, killing all 224 passengers on board.
Russia has been carrying out air strikes against opponents of President Bashar al-Assad since late September.
Turkey, which is a member of a US-led coalition, insists Mr Assad must step down before any political solution to the crisis is found.
In an article in The Times Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu pointed out that “Turkey took action, based on standing rules of engagement”, adding that “the measures to defend our territory will remain in place”.
But the prime minister also stressed that “the necessary discussions are now taking place”.
Mr Erdogan earlier rejected calls by Russia to apologise, saying Ankara did not need to say sorry for defending its airspace.
However, he told France 24 television: “If we had known it was a Russian plane, maybe we would have warned it differently”.
In another interview with CNN, Mr Erdogan said he was “saddened by what happened” but again refused to apologise.
On Thursday, Mr Putin insisted it was “impossible” for Turkey not to have known it was shooting at a Russian plane.
He accused the US of passing on to Turkey details of the time and the place where Russian planes were.
The Turkish military says it sent a number of warnings to the Russian jet before firing a missile, some 17 seconds after the plane entered Turkish air space.
The surviving Russian pilot has said he received no such warning and was adamant the plane did not stray out of Syrian air space.
