Meanwhile, the United States has independently confirmed Turkey’s assertion that the Russian warplane it shot down last week violated Turkish airspace, a State Department official said on Monday.
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The rising tensions between Turkey and Russian Federation come as both sides continue to bolster their military presence on the Turkish-Syrian border. “And I want to make sure that we focus on that threat, and I want to make sure that we remain focused on the need to bring about some sort of political resolution in Syria”.
In 2014 Russian Federation also supplied 27bn cubic metres of natural gas to Turkey, representing 56% of its total consumption.
“We have all grounds to suspect that the decision to down our plane was motivated by the intention to secure these routes of delivering oil to ports where it is loaded on tankers”, Putin added.
He explained his government wished to reduce tensions and was “decided to keep up the fight” against IS. And that area is continuously bombed.
Putin has demanded an apology and reimbursement for the damages, but both Erdoğan and Davutoğlu have stressed that Turkey will not apologize for defending its airspace.
But he insisted, as he did last week, that he was “confident we are on the winning side of this”. Tensions have escalated since the incident, which also saw the killing of Russian pilot at the hand of the militants in Syria as he parachuted down.
Yet in a fresh reminder of strains with Moscow, Erdogan repeated his denouncement of Russian airstrikes in Syria’s Turkmen region.
President Barack Obama warned Tuesday that persuading Russian Federation to change course over Syria in order to tackle ISIS would take a long time. Putin supports Assad, while Obama and Erdogan want him to go.
Reports over the past week said that Turkish businesses in Russian Federation were being raided, Turkish tourists were being denied entry into Russian Federation and trucks loaded with Turkish products were being sent back at the border.
He said: “I don’t expect you’re going to see a 180 turn on their strategy”.
Turkey strongly opposes Mr Assad and has been accused of turning a blind eye to jihadist fighters crossing from its territory into Syria. However, in August it allowed the US-led coalition to begin using its airbase at Incirlik.
“If such a thing is proven, the nobility of our nation would require that I would not stay in office”, Mr Erdogan was quoted by the state-run Anatolia news agency as saying on the sidelines of the United Nations climate talks in France, which Mr Putin is also attending.
Putin, who has signed a decree imposing economic sanctions on Turkey over the incident, has said Turkey shot down the jet because it wanted to protect supplies of oil from Islamic State militants.
IS earns much of its money from oil fields it controls in north-eastern Syria and western Iraq.
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A few of the petroleum comes to the Assad regime and some is smuggled to Turkey through middlemen.
