Erdogan had previously sought a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the climate summit meeting in Paris but Kremlin rejected the request.
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Turkey’s military said the Su-24 bomber was shot down by two of its F-16s after it violated Turkish airspace 10 times within a five-minute period on Tuesday. “[Turkish citizens] will [simply] need to get a visa to visit Russia”, Igor Shuvalov said.
Russia’s state-run Sputnik news agency reported that Peshkov’s body was met by Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Russian air force Commander-in-Chief Victor Bondarev.
Lilit Gevorgyan, senior economist at IHS Global Insight, said the confrontation was “a major setback of more than a decade long efforts to build commercial and energy partnership between Russian Federation and Turkey, despite their geopolitical and historic differences”.
Ankara on Monday sent back to Russian Federation the body of a pilot killed in the downing of the jet after it was delivered from Syria to Turkey over the weekend.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutgolu said on Sunday that Peshkov’s body had arrived in Turkey overnight, but gave no further details of how it was recovered or brought across the border.
MOSCOW (AP) – Russia will restrict imports of Turkish fruit and vegetables as part of a package of new sanctions following the downing of a Russian warplane by Turkey last week.
Erdogan has called claims that Turkey buys oil from Islamic State “slander”.
Russian football clubs have been banned from signing Turkish players during the forthcoming transfer window due strained relations between the two countries.
In the bitter debate over where a Russian warplane was flying when Turkish aircraft shot it down, the United States took Turkey’s side Monday. Moscow has denied any intrusion, saying it was engaged in bombing IS rebels in Syria.
Turkey and Russian Federation have enjoyed burgeoning trade ties in recent years despite disagreements on a number of political issues from Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine to the more than four-year old civil war in Syria. “The airplane was in Turkey, it was engaged in Turkey, it had been warned repeatedly”, Ambassador Douglas Lute told reporters.
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The countries disagree sharply on whether the Russian plane was in Turkish airspace when it was shot down, as well as whether any warnings went out to the crew.
