Turkey’s president calls for face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin over

But Erdogan, in the same speech, accused Moscow of “playing with fire” in continuing to attack rebels in Syria.

Asked why Putin hasn’t picked up the phone to respond to Erdogan’s two phone calls, he said that “we have seen that the Turkish side hasn’t been ready to offer an elementary apology over the plane incident”.

Earlier on Friday, Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov said the Russian head of state had refused to contact Erdogan.

The two USA officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, however, that Russian Federation had not passed along the kind of granular operational details suggested by Putin in his public remarks.

“I couldn’t imagine that Russian Federation would completely abandon its relations with Turkey over such an incident”, he told a news conference.

Turkey, which has long sought Assad’s ouster, said that Turkey did not go looking to shoot down a Russian jet but acted after it strayed into Turkish air space.

He said Ankara “risks putting Turkey in a most severe situation, with respect to both its long-term national interests and the situation in the region”.

Russia has rejected Turkey’s claims that it did not know the plane it shot down on the Syria border was Russian. The fighter jet, which was on an anti-terror mission, crashed well within Syrian territory after coming under attack.

Hollande on Thursday met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the hope of convincing Russia to work alongside the 65-member coalition fighting the Islamic State in Syria. “Our findings show clearly that Turkish airspace was violated multiple times”.

He insisted that the Russian Su-24 bomber hadn’t veered into Turkey’s airspace, and also claimed that the Turkish F-16 fighter jet flew into Syria’s airspace for 40 seconds to down the Russian plane.

Turkey has released audio recordings of what it says are the Turkish military’s repeated warnings to the pilot of the Russian plane – audio that grows increasingly more agitated. Russian Federation has threatened economic retaliation, a response Erdogan has dismissed as emotional and indecorous.

“In relation to our aircraft that were allegedly not identified – it’s not possible, it’s not possible”, Putin said according to a translator.

“We agreed on a very important issue: To strike the terrorists only, Daesh and the jihadi groups only, and not to strike the forces and the groups that are fighting against the terrorists”, Hollande said after the meeting, referring to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym.