PM Says Turkey Cannot Be ‘Brought to its Knees’ by Russian Federation

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week signed a decree adopting a series of retaliatory economic measures against Turkey over the downing of a Russian warplane on the Syrian border.

He made the remarks while speaking at ADA University in Baku.

The Russian head of state raised the stakes on Thursday, warning Turkey that it will regret its behavior “more than once” and added that Moscow will not let Ankara escape merely with sanctions on Turkish tomatoes and construction projects. “The Turkish minister confirmed the approaches previously voiced publically by both the president and prime minister of Turkey”. He suggested for the first time, however, that the plane was brought down because Turkey could not “morally” allow the plane to trespass on Turkish territory before bombing areas in Syria where ethnic Turkish populations live.

“It is possible to find different suppliers”, Erdogan said in a televised speech, referring to Qatar and Azerbaijan.

After Turkey rejected imposing sanctions against Russia as the worldwide community was urging for an embargo, Russian officials thanked Ankara for Turkey’s stance, he said.

The Russian Su-24 bomber was shot down over Syria by an air-to-air surface fired from a Turkish F-16 plane when the bomber was at an altitude of 6,000 meters at a distance of 1 km from the Turkish border. The militants shot and killed the downed plane’s pilot while he was descending on parachute and also killed a Russian marine involved in rescuing the plane’s co-pilot.