Russian president Vladimir Putin has called for sanctions against Turkey, following the downing this week of a Russian warplane.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Moscow not to play with fire, hinting that Turkey would act in the same manner under similar circumstances, although he did say yesterday that he wished the incident had not occurred.
It also calls for ending chartered flights from Russia to Turkey and for all Russian tourism companies to stop offering vacation packages to Turkey.
Russian Federation has since also restricted tourist travel to Turkey, left Turkish lorries stranded at the border, confiscated large quantities of Turkish food imports and started preparing a raft of broader economic sanctions.
‘Instead of (…) ensuring this never happens again, we are hearing unintelligible explanations and statements that there is nothing to apologise about’.
“I hope this will not happen again”, Erdogan said at an event in Balikesir.
Citing problems faced by Turks in Russian Federation in the wake of the plane incident which sparked anti-Turkish demonstrations in Moscow, the ministry said non-urgent visits to Russian Federation should be avoided “until the situation becomes clear”.
The foreign ministry in Ankara said travel to Russian Federation should be avoided a day after Moscow – which had earlier urged its nationals to leave Turkey – announced it was scrapping its visa-free regime for Turkish visitors.
After the incident, Russia deployed long-range S-400 air defence missile systems to a Russian airbase in Syria just 50 kilometres south of the border with Turkey to help protect Russian warplanes, and the Russian military warned it would shoot down any aerial target that would pose a potential threat to its planes.
Erdogan told supporters during a speech in Bayburt in northeast Turkey on Friday that Russian Federation “is playing with fire to go as far as mistreating our citizens who have gone to Russia”. “We don’t want these relations to suffer harm in any way”.
“Nobody has the right to traitorously shoot down a Russian plane from behind”, Peskov told Russia’s “News on Saturday” TV programme, calling Turkish evidence purporting to show the Russian SU-24 jet had violated Turkish air space “cartoons”. In his most conciliatory comments yet after Tuesday’s incident, Erdogan said: “I’m really saddened by the incident”. Turkey’s president responded by saying IS are selling oil to Syria’s President al-Assad, accusing Russian Federation of supporting the terrorist group by keeping Assad in power.
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Putin, on the other hand, is supporting his ally Assad and has accused Turkey of being soft on the Islamic State and of being partly responsible for its growth by backing the regime in Damascus.
