Turkish businessmen in Russia alarmed

Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan also said the Russian president should not mistreat Turkish citizens in Russia if he does not want to want to damage relations with his country.

He cited reports Turkish businessmen had been detained in Russian Federation, while Moscow said it would suspend visa-free travel with Turkey, Reuters reports.

The Russian Su-24 bomber had not crossed Turkish airspace as Ankara claimed, Peskov said, adding the map presented by Turkey to show that it did was manipulated.

Putin had previously refused to take Erdogan’s call following the plane downing.

Russia’s lower house speaker, Sergei Naryshkin, said on Friday that Moscow had the right to make a military response, calling the incident an “intentional murder of our soldiers”. There are 90,000 Turkish nationals working in Russian Federation, and including their families, up to 200,000 residing in Moscow.

“I would like to meet him face to face on Monday”, Erdogan said after days of tit-for-tat accusations over the incident that has severely damaged ties. “We are disturbed that the issue has been escalated”.

On Friday, he accused Moscow of “playing with fire” in its Syria operations.

However, he told France 24 television: “If we had known it was a Russian plane, maybe we would have warned it differently”.

Erdogan on November 27 also rejected allegations from Putin that Turkey was helping to fund Islamic State (IS) militants by buying oil from the extremist group.

The incident has sparked a war of words between the two countries, with each accusing the other of being in the wrong.

Speaking with French President François Hollande, Putin said the US and Russian Federation would need to have “serious consultations” concerning the warplane matter, according to the Associated Press.

The Russian government is now preparing economic retaliatory measures against Turkey, a major trading partner particularly in the tourism and agriculture sectors.

Russia has rejected Turkey’s claims it did not know the plane it shot down on the Syrian border was Russian. He said a meeting in Paris would be an opportunity to overcome tensions, and he renewed a call for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin in the sidelines of a climate conference in Paris next week.