Turkey on Monday warned the Russian ambassador that there should be no repeat of an incident last week, when a Russian sailor allegedly brandished a rocket launcher on the deck of a naval ship passing through Istanbul, foreign ministry sources said.
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Turkey-Russia relations have deteriorated sharply since Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian Su-24 and Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Turkey of obtaining oil from territory controlled by Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL).
Russia’s energy minister said Thursday that Moscow has suspended talks on their joint TurkStream project to pipe gas to Turkey and southern Europe.
The Turkish strongman said Russian Federation had made “no sign” that the crisis would affect their energy partnership, but he implied that Ankara was seeking new suppliers.
The Turkish president visited Qatar this week and agreed on a liquefied natural gas deal, while Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu travelled to Azerbaijan. However Erdogan, in his speech, assured his country that the sanctions would have little impact on the nation’s economy, adding that Turkey would find other buyers for its exports.
Ankara has said the Russian plane violated Turkish airspace. “We continued to export goods”.
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USA officials said coalition air operations have seriously degraded the jihadists’ oil infrastructure, but that in any case most of the crude pumped from its wells was absorbed inside Syria’s war zone economy. We are speaking a diplomatic language. “We discussed all issues in a positive atmosphere”.
