Turkey refuses to apologise to Russia over jet incident

Turkey’s prime minister dismissed any suggestion Ankara should apologise for downing a Russian warplane in its airspace last week, after winning strong NATO support for the right to defend itself.

Seven days after NATO member Turkey shot down the Russian fighter jet in the first known incident of its kind since the Cold War, calls for calm have gone largely unheeded as Ankara refuses to back down and Russia responds with sanctions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin snubbed a meeting with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Paris as the body of a pilot killed when Ankara downed one of Moscow’s warplanes was flown home.

“No country should ask us to apologise,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters.

“The protection of our land borders, our airspace, is not only a right, it is a duty,” he said. “We apologise for committing mistakes, not for doing our duty.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on November 26 he is waiting for an apology after Turkey’s air force shot down the Su-24 fighter jet along the Turkey-Syria border.

Following the meeting with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg in which he won the alliance’s firm support for the right to self-defence, Davutoglu also warned that such incidents continued to be a risk as long as Russia and the US-led coalition bombing Islamic State in Syria worked separately.

“If there are two coalitions functioning in the same airspace against ISIL, these types of incidents will be difficult to prevent,” Davutoglu said, referring to Islamic State militants.

Seeking to calm the situation, Stoltenberg called for new emergency procedures to be agreed with Moscow to avoid triggering conflict by accident. NATO foreign ministers are expected to discuss such procedures at a meeting in Brussels today and tomorrow as Russia’s military activities from the Baltics to the Middle East come right up to — and sometimes stray over — NATO borders.

Stoltenberg suggested revamping the Cold War-era treaty known as the Vienna document, which sets out the rules for large-scale exercises and other military activity, as well telephone hotlines and other military communication channels.

“It has to be modernised because there are several loopholes,” Stoltenberg said.

US President Barack Obama met with Putin at the sidelines of the climate summit in Paris and discussed the Syrian crisis as well as the situation in Ukraine, a White House official said.

Obama told Putin he believes Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must leave power as part of a political transition, the official said.

He also emphasised a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, adding that sanctions against Russia can be rolled back when Moscow honours the Minsk accord, according to the official.