Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called it an “automatic reaction” to standing instructions given to the military.
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The Turkish embassy in Moscow was vandalized by unidentified perpetrators on Wednesday in apparent retaliation, a local news website reported. The surviving pilot said that the jet did not violate Turkish airspace and that they did not receive any warnings from the Turkish side, refuting claims by Ankara that it warned the Russian jet a number of times. The almost five-year-old Syrian civil war has been complicated by Russian air strikes in defence of President Bashar al-Assad.
He claimed that the Russian air raids did not target the Islamic State group.
Russian Federation is suspending its visa-free regime with Turkey from January 1, 2016, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
Erdogan said on November 27 that he hoped he would be able to meet with Putin on the sidelines of the November 30 climate summit in Paris.
“It does not in any way contradict what we do with the coalition led by the United States”, Russia’s Tass news agency quoted President Vladimir Putin as saying, adding that Moscow will also use other means such as fighter escort and electronic warfare to defend its planes in Syria.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree imposing economic sanctions against Turkey.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the Turks had asked for a meeting between the two leaders but said: “The president has been told about this request…”
Moscow has also hinted the reprisals could hit two major projects with Turkey – a planned gas pipeline and a nuclear power plant.
‘Instead of (…) ensuring this never happens again, we are hearing unintelligible explanations and statements that there is nothing to apologise about’.
Mr Lavrov said on Friday that Russian Federation strongly backs France’s proposal to shut down the Turkish-Syrian border as a way to fight IS fighters in Syria. “There is a rule as regards committing special forces and that (is that) in general we don’t say it”, he said.
But he also said Turkey did not want to damage its relationship with Russian Federation.
One Russian pilot was killed by Syrian rebels while parachuting to the ground, while his compatriot was rescued and returned safely to the Khmeimim airbase.
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With some 4.5million Russians visiting Turkey in 2014, they made up about 12 percent of visitors, second only to Germans.
