Turkey’s Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned the Russian ambassador over what it termed a “provocation” on the Bosporus by a Russian serviceman aboard a naval ship, Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported.
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Relations have deteriorated sharply since Turkey last week became the first North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member in more than half a century to down a Russian plane, which it said had violated its airspace while flying sorties over Syria.
Russia’s energy minister said Thursday that Moscow has suspended talks on their joint TurkStream project to pipe gas to Turkey and southern Europe.
Cavusoglu did not provide details but said: “The ship’s passage in such a way was an openly provocative passage”.
Turkey has expressed outrage over the images of the alleged rocket launcher. “This has to come to an end”, Cavusoglu told Kanal 24 television.
Most recently, Russia’s top generals accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family of involvement in a multi-million dollar oil smuggling operation that is funding the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh).
The Bosphorus strait is a waterway in northern Turkey, the busiest strait on the planet and connects the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea.
Russia was the fourth largest foreign direct investor in Turkey in 2014 Russian foreign direct investments in Turkey were around $730m or 0.1% of Turkey’s GDP in 2014.
In recent weeks, some observers have questioned whether Turkey might close the waterways if tensions between the two countries further racheted up.
Because the incident occurred between two countries with different goals, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said at the time that the incident “sends the wrong message to the terrorists” in Syria.
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The Russian Su-24 shot down in Syria by a Turkish F-16 on November 24th for being in Turkish air space may have been the victim of self-inflicted communications problems.
