Turkish President Returns Body of Russian Pilot Downed by Turkish Military

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.

The Turkish government has refused to apologise for the incident.

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.

Despite the sanctions, however, Davutoglu said on Monday that Turkey would not apologise for “protecting its borders”.

The incident left one pilot dead; another was rescued.

“What we tell Russian Federation is ‘Let’s talk about this issue within its boundaries and let’s settle it. Let’s not make others happy by hurting our relationship”, he said.

A Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) officer and the Russian military attaché retrieved the body of the pilot in the border province of Hatay on Sunday, before it was taken to Ankara in a Turkish military cargo plane in the afternoon.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu talks during an interview with Reuters in Istanbul, Turkey, October 14, 2015.

Both United States along with other allies, including Turkey, as well as Russian Federation are carrying out air campaigns against Islamic State and other groups.

Klimov said “the planes are equipped with missiles for their defense”, though he did not elaborate on possible air attackers.

Russia, meanwhile, maintains that the jet never entered Turkish territory and was downed over Syria.

Moscow’s surprise intervention in the four-year-old Syrian civil war in September wrong-footed the West and put Turkey, which shares a long border with Syria, directly at odds with Russian support for the Assad regime there.

On Monday, the body of Lt. Col. Oleg Peshkov, the Russian pilot, was flown back to Russia following a military ceremony in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Turkey’s military said.

Russian tour firms promptly halted the sale of holidays to Turkey, in line with a directive from the federal tourism agency. Moscow has denied any intrusion, saying it was engaged in bombing IS rebels in Syria.

“The charter flights to Turkey banned, except those used to retrive Russian tourists from there”, Igor Suvalov said.

Turkey has released a number of recordings which it claims prove that the warplane was warned repeatedly prior to being shot down.