Turkey says cannot be ‘brought to its knees’ by Russia’s economic sanctions

Putin in his speech accused Turkey of a “treacherous war crime” in downing a Russian warplane at the border with Syria.

Following Monday’s meeting with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of a climate summit in Paris, Putin said they have a shared understanding on how to move toward a political settlement in Syria and discussed efforts to compile one list of extremist groups and another of legitimate political opposition.

“We have every reason to think that the decision to shoot down our plane was dictated by the desire to protect the oil supply lines to Turkish territory”, the Russian president said.

“I don’t believe that there is significant smuggling, between ISIL-controlled areas and Turkey of oil in any significance in volume”, Hochstein said.

Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, who hosted the briefing, said: “A united team of criminals and Turkish elites, involved in stealing oil from its neighbors, is acting in the region”. While in the short-term not much has changed, Turkey’s actions against Russian Federation in Syria may prove to be a longer-term tipping point for Ankara’s transatlantic relations if managed properly by the West.

Officials on Friday confirmed that some small amount of oil may cross the Syria-Turkish border in tanker trucks, but not in quantities that would interest government officials.

“During the Cold War there was a Soviet propaganda machine”.

Speaking in Baku, Davutoglu said Turkey and Azerbaijan had agreed to complete the project before the original target date of mid-2018. But when Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian Su-24 attack aircraft over the Syrian border last week, the incident exposed the explosive potential of the differences among the foreign countries intervening in the almost five-year-old Syrian civil war.

The fallout from Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian warplane that violated its airspace over Thanksgiving week has continued to reverberate with regional and global implications.

Defence ministry officials sit under screens with satellite images on display during a briefing in Moscow, Russia, December 2, 2015.

Putin, whose administration has already announced sanctions against Ankara including a ban on the import of some Turkish foods, and reintroduced visas for visitors from the country, insisted Turkey would be made to regret its actions. “We would not apologize for defending our borders”.

Lavrov said he “heard nothing new” from Cavusoglu. “If such a thing is proven, the nobility of our nation would require that I would not stay in office”. “We apologise for committing mistakes, not for doing our duty”.

“About 15 percent of Turkish agricultural products on average do not meet Russian standards”, said Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev.

The comments were the latest in what has been a deteriorating relationship between Russia and NATO-member Turkey, after the latter downed a Russian fighter jet last month.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Thursday that talks with Turkey on building a pipeline that would allow Russia to export natural gas to the European Union through Turkey have been halted. Sijbren de Jong, a Russian Federation expert at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, concurs: “The only place other than China that Russian Federation says it is pivoting toward is Turkey”.