Turkey says its patience with Russia ‘has a limit’ – newspaper

The new incident involving Russian warships came after the defence ministry said a Russian destroyer in the Aegean Sea on Sunday opened fire to avoid a collision with a Turkish fishing boat.

The Turkish vessel finally diverted, “drastically changing course” according to the Russian account, only in response to the warning shots, before passing the Russian destroyer at close quarters, within less than half a kilometer, all while continuing to maintain complete radio silence, according to Russian officials.

It said in a statement that Russian Federation expresses deep concerns about what it calls Turkish “provocations”, and warned about “the potentially disastrous consequences from Ankara’s reckless actions towards Russia’s military contingent fighting against global terrorism in Syria”.

Russia and Turkey have been nearing an actual confrontation since the latter downed a Russian bomber over the Turkey-Syria airspace. “We need to solve the tension with conversation”, he said, in comments broadcast by TRT Turk. “We have always been in favour of overcoming tensions through dialogue rather than conflict”, he added, quoted by Dogan news agency. We didn’t even know it was a Russian ship.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that the Su-24M jet had been exclusively over Syrian territory and had not violated Turkey’s airspace.

The shots were fired in order to prevent the collision between the two vessels, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

A Russian pilot was killed as he parachuted to the ground following the attack last month, while a rescuer also died during an operation to save the other pilot.

Putin retaliated with a series of economic sanctions, projected to cost Turkey more than $9 billion in the coming year, and froze plans for a Gazprom gas pipeline in the Black Sea.

Turkey’s foreign minister said Ankara’s patience with Russian Federation “has a limit” after Moscow’s “exaggerated” reaction to a weekend naval incident between the two countries, an Italian newspaper reported on Monday.

“We have seen the Russian statement”, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Rome, where he had been following an worldwide conference on Libya.