Moscow slapped sanctions on Ankara on Friday as the war of words over a downed Russian warplane escalated, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warning Russia not to “play with fire”.
As part of the latest sanctions, Russia announced it was halting a visa-free regime for Turkish visitors, after threatening a raft of retaliatory economic measures to punish the NATO member state.
Tuesday’s incident has sent recriminations flying between two rival players in the Syrian war just as countries such as France are pushing for a broader coalition to try to defeat the Islamic State group.
“We advise Russia not to play with fire,” Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara earlier on Friday, lashing out at Russia’s response to the downing as well as its support of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.
Erdogan nevertheless said he wanted a direct meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin when the two leaders are in Paris next week for the UN climate summit.
But Moscow responded coolly, saying Turkey has yet to apologize for shooting down the jet on the Syrian border.
Turkey says the Su-24 warplane strayed into its airspace and ignored repeated warnings but Russia insisted it did not cross from Syria.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Turkey had “crossed the line of what is acceptable” and warned the incident could severely undermine both its national and regional interests.
Moscow has ruled out any military response, but has pledged broad measures targeting entire sectors of the Turkish economy including tourism, agriculture and possibly key energy projects.
Lavrov said Turkish nationals would require visas from January 1, after Putin this week warned citizens not to travel to Turkey — a hugely popular destination for Russians.
“Russia is quite concerned with increasing terrorist threats in the Republic of Turkey,” Lavrov added, after a spate of bloody attacks blamed on Islamic State (ISIS) extremists there.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday gave ministers two days to work out a plan to curb cooperation with Turkish companies after Russia said it would tighten checks on food imports over alleged safety standard violations.
Moscow has also hinted the reprisals could hit two major projects with Turkey — a planned gas pipeline and a nuclear power plant.
The two countries have built trade ties in recent years and Russia is already energy-poor Turkey’s biggest oil and gas supplier.
But they are on opposing sides in the Syrian conflict, with Ankara backing rebels fighting to topple Assad while Moscow is one of his last remaining allies.
Erdogan, whose ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a landslide election victory earlier this month, said Turkey did not “deliberately” shoot down the plane.
He dismissed Putin’s criticism of the incident as “unacceptable”, noting that Russian planes had twice violated Turkish air space in October.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday the Turks had asked for a meeting between the two leaders but said, “The president has been told about this request… That’s all I can say.”
The Turkish army insisted earlier this week it did not know the warplane it downed on the Syrian border was Russian, adding it was ready for “all kinds of cooperation” with the Russian military authorities following the incident.
AFP contributed to this report.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)
