The Turkish Air Force shot down the Russian military planes SU-24 in its airspace November 24.
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On Saturday Turkey issued a travel warning urging its nationals to delay non-urgent and unnecessary travel to Russian Federation, saying Turkish travelers were facing “problems” in the country.
Warplanes, believed to be Russian, mounted yesterday a series of strikes near the Syrian-Turkish border for the second consecutive day, a monitoring group said.
Following the doning of the Russian bomber, Moscow announced steps to be taken: the provision of aerial cover by fighter jets for every airstrike; the boosting of air defense by deploying guided missile cruisers off the Latakia coast, and suspending all military-to-military contacts with Turkey. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has directed government ministers to draw up economic measures against Turkey.
“It is playing with fire to go as far as mistreating our citizens who have gone to Russia”, Erdogan told supporters during a speech in Bayburt, in northeast Turkey, on Friday.
“We have not yet received any clear apology from Turkey’s high political level, nor any proposal to compensate the harm and damage or promises to punish perpetrators of the crime”, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a ceremony of the presentation of credentials by new foreign ambassadors. “The nationality of these planes who are flying towards our border were unknown despite the warnings”, Erdogan said.
“If we allow our sovereign rights to be violated… then the territory would no longer be our territory”, Erdogan said.
And Lavrov said that Russian Federation has made a decision to suspend its visa-free system with Turkey on January 1. He also complained that Turkey was deporting Russians to countries that are not friendly to Russia without giving Russia proper notice.
Turkey has exported food and agricultural produce worth over €1bn (£702m) to Russian Federation already this year, and 20% of Russia’s vegetable imports come from Turkey.
Both countries have recently suffered devastating attacks by IS-supporting terrorists.
Mr Erdogan said he hoped to meet Mr Putin face to face on the sidelines of the climate summit in Paris next week “to bring the issue to a reasonable point”.
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“In relation to our aircraft that were allegedly not identified – it’s not possible, it’s not possible”, Putin said according to a translator.
