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Turkey won’t apologize to Russian Federation over warplane downing

Russian President, Vladimir Putin ordered the sanctions on Saturday, which included bans on some Turkish exports, a prohibition on the hiring of Turkish nationals from 2016 and a suspension of visa-free travel for Turkish citizens.

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Erdogan had called for face-to-face talks with Putin as Moscow and Ankara trade furious charge and counter-charge over who was responsible for downing the plane.

“We have been telling our Russian friends that their bombardments against civilians on our border is creating new waves of refugees which do not go to Russia or to any other country – but coming to Turkey”, he said.

Turkey won’t apologize to Russian Federation for shooting down a warplane operating over Syria, the Turkish prime minister said Monday, stressing that the military was doing its job defending the country’s airspace.

Ankara is ready to talk with Moscow to prevent similar incidents in the future, the prime minister added.

Russian Federation on Monday laid out more details of retaliatory economic sanctions aimed at denting Turkey’s key tourism and agricultural sectors.

Turkish companies already involved in constructing stadiums for the 2018 World Cup in Russian Federation would be allowed to continue, he said.

Local reports said Peshkov will be buried Wednesday after his body arrives in his hometown Lipetsk, an industrial city in central Russian Federation.

Davutoglu decried Russia’s sanctions against Turkey and called on Moscow to “reconsider these measures in both our interests”, while reiterating once again Ankara’s willingness to talk. ‘Our focus now is on de-escalating the situation, calming tensions’.

Turkmen are a Turkic ethnic group based largely in Syria and Iraq, where they live alongside large Arab and Kurdish populations.

Russian Federation claims that its planes were bombing ISIS militants in the area, though Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that only Turkmen – “our brothers and sisters” – were in that region of Syria.

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Russian Federation has always been a staunch ally of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and has backed him throughout the uprising that began in March 2011.

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