NEWS: TURKEY VS RUSSIA - THE WAR OF WORDS.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned Russia's President Vladimir Putin not to "play with fire" over his country's downing of a Russian jet.

Mr Erdogan also said he wanted to meet Mr Putin "face-to-face" at climate talks in Paris to resolve the issue.

Mr Putin wants an apology from Turkey before he will speak to Mr Erdogan, the Russian president's aide said.

Russia has suspended its visa-free arrangement with Turkey in the latest of a range of retaliatory measures.


Turkey says the Russian warplane was in its airspace when the decision was taken to shoot it down on Tuesday - Russia insists the plane was flying over Syria at the time.

Tensions have been heightened by the fact that the two countries are pursuing different aims in Syria.

Russia has been carrying out air strikes against opponents of President Bashar al-Assad since late September, while Turkey, which is a member of a US-led coalition, insists Mr Assad must step down before any political solution to the crisis is found.

However, all are united in trying to rid the region of the so-called Islamic State (IS), also known as Daesh.

On Thursday, Turkey's President Erdogan seemed to offer an olive branch to Moscow when he told France 24 TV: "If we had known it was a Russian plane, maybe we would have warned it differently." On Friday, he accused Moscow of "playing with fire" and "lying".

Did he change his rhetoric dramatically in less than 24 hours? Hardly. The first message was delivered to a Western audience, the second, to a domestic.

Turkey's Western allies in Nato fully backed Ankara in the crisis - but also questioned in more hushed tones whether 17 seconds of airspace violation was good enough reason to shoot down a plane.

Despite the harsh rhetoric on Friday, Mr Erdogan also repeated his offer to meet Mr Putin next week. But Mr Putin made clear that he wants an apology before he agrees to a meeting. The war of words between the two strong men of the East shows no sign of abating.

In a televised speech, Mr Erdogan warned Russia it was "playing with fire to attack the Syrian opposition, who have international legitimacy, under the pretext of fighting against Daesh".

He said Moscow was also playing with fire to use the downing of the jet "as an excuse to make unacceptable accusations against us", and accused Russians of "mistreating" Turkish citizens who were in the country for a trade fair.

Mr Erdogan said he hoped to meet Mr Putin face-to-face on the sidelines of the climate summit in Paris next week. "I would like to bring the issue to a reasonable point. We are disturbed that the issue has been escalated."

While he has refused to apologise, Mr Erdogan did say on Thursday that had Turkey known the plane was Russian, "may be we would have warned it differently".

Turkey's claim that it did not know the plane was Russian has been firmly rejected by Mr Putin. He said the plane was easily identifiable and its coordinates had been passed on to Turkey's ally, the US.

Announcing the suspension of a visa-free travel regime with Turkey from 1 January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he believed the Turkish leadership had "crossed the line of what is acceptable".

Russia on Thursday said it was drafting a wide-ranging list of economic sanctions against Turkey, that would hit food imports and joint investment projects among other things.

Turkey and Russia have important economic links. Russia is Turkey's second-largest trading partner, while more than three million Russian tourists visited Turkey last year.

The Russian SU-24 bomber crashed into a Syrian mountainside in a rebel-held area close to the Turkish border.

One of the two Russian pilots was killed by gunfire as he parachuted from the burning jet. The other pilot was rescued by Russian and Syrian special forces.

The Turkish military says it sent a number of warnings to the Russian jet before firing a missile, some 17 seconds after the plane entered Turkish air space.

The surviving Russian pilot has said he received no such warning and was adamant the plane did not stray out of Syrian air space.

After the incident, Turkey was reported to have suspended air strikes against IS militants in Syria as part of "a mutual decision taken with Russia, which has also halted its aerial campaign near the Turkish border", Turkish media quoted officials as saying.

IS claimed the 13 November attacks in Paris which killed 130 people, and an affiliate of the group has said it bombed a Russian passenger plane in October, killing all 224 passengers on board.


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