“And evidently Allah chose to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by depriving them of their intelligence and reason”.
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Moscow and Iran support Syrian President Bashar Assad, while the United States and its European, Arab and Turkish allies want him gone, and back his enemies.
The Kremlin dismissed these claims as “rubbish” and insists the aircraft had stayed in Syrian airspace, from where it is carrying out airstrikes.
Moscow has already responded with measures including bans on some Turkish fruit and vegetables, and in his icy remarks Putin made clear that would not be the end of it.
“We will not be evading this contact”, Lavrov said during a visit to Cyprus.
If Turkey thinks it’s going to get away with “mere restrictions on the trade of tomatoes or some other restrictions … then they are grossly mistaken”, Putin said.
Turkey would have cause to regret its actions “more than once”, he said, promising Russia’s retaliatory actions would be neither hysterical nor unsafe.
Russia’s top generals yesterday accused Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, and his family of personal involvement in a multi-million dollar oil-smuggling operation that is funding terrorists from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
“Turkey is the main consumer of the oil stolen from its rightful owners, Syria and Iraq”, said Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov in a press conference.
“It is precisely with this money that the bandits recruit mercenaries, buy arms and organise inhuman terrorist acts aimed against our citizens, the citizens of France, Lebanon, Mali and other countries”.
Russian officials described three main routes by which they said oil and oil products were smuggled from Islamic State territory into Turkey.
“They were called Pravda lies”, he said, referring to the daily newspaper that was the mouthpiece of the Communist Party.
Erdogan responded by saying no one had the right to “slander” Turkey by accusing it of buying oil from Islamic State, and that he would stand down if such allegations were proven to be true.
Hundreds of trucks carrying Turkish exports have been blocked from entering Russian Federation and are stranded at the Ukrainian border.
“It is an illegal government, Russia should see that it is not legal”, Erdogan said and added he spoke about this issue with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on several occasions.
He said the best way to stop the oil trade from IS-controlled territory into Turkey would be to close the Turkey-Syria border.
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“Turkish buyers remain anxious about buying Russian commodities as no one knows what will happen and the fact is that Russia is still defiant and increasing tensions”, one trader in Turkey said.
