Turkey cannot be ‘brought to its knees’ by Russia: PM

“The Russian sanctions against Turkey won’t knock our country down…Moscow should open diplomatic channels to resolve this crisis instead of imposing sanctions against Turkey”, Davutoglu said.

Davutoglu urged the Russian authorities to discuss the problems face to face.

The meeting would mark the two countries’ first high-level face-to-face talks since the downing of the Russian plane on November 24 along Turkey’s border with Syria, which has badly strained relations between Ankara and Moscow.

Turkey, which has been seeking to diversify its sources of imported energy to decrease its dependence on Russian Federation, may buy more than the planned 6 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas from the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) from Azerbaijan, Davutoglu also said. He also reiterated that Turkey did not know which nation the plane was from, and that it was in Turkish airspace.

“Nobody can blame Turkey for this or wait for any apology”.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Saturday called for dialogue with Russia to overcome tensions after the downing of a Russian warplane near the Syrian border for alleged violations of Turkey’s airspace.

Erdogan has rejected Putin’s demands to apologise over the incident, saying that Turkey was acting well within its rights to protect its border. “The Americans understand that it need to be done and understand that the Kurds are the allies of the United States and other countries”, Lavrov said.

“Such ethnic-based cantons would later result in those ethnicities splitting away from each other”, he said. “Those who want to change the borders in the Middle East support such ideas of cantons”, he added. Every day, they would come up with a new lie. “Perhaps there will be something new after what has already been said publicly”.

“Every type of support from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and its member states will prevent the possible provocative actions in the region, in addition to contributing to the stability of Syria”, he added.

Lavrov also met with USA counterpart John Kerry while in Belgrade, and said they spoke “about the measures for the closure of the Syrian-Turkish border, as well as the Turkish-Iraqi border”.