Russian jet downed over pilot’s mistake: Erdogan

Turkey’s president has blamed the November 24 downing of a Russian jet by the Turkish military on the negligence of the pilot, saying “the mistake of a pilot” should not affect the ties between Ankara and Moscow.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the comments while returning to Turkey from a meeting in Turkmenistan's capital of Ashgabat in a bid to reduce the tensions with Russia, the leading Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News reported on Monday.

Moscow and Ankara have been in a war of words since Turkey shot down the Russian Su-24 fighter jet over Syria, claiming that it had entered the Turkish airspace and was warned before being shot, an accusation strongly rejected by Russia.

The surviving Russian pilot had also denied Ankara’s claim that Turkish jets issued any visual or radio warnings before shooting down the warplane. "There was no warning, not by radio exchange nor visually. There was no contact at all,” said Konstantin Murakhtin.
 

“We wouldn’t have wanted to come across such a [situation], but looking from another perspective a mistake has been made in our sovereign area. Who made this mistake? Not the manager, of course. It is the pilots who were negligent and did not hear the warnings,” Erdogan said.

Of the two pilots aboard the warplane, one was rescued with the help of the Syrian army, but the other was wounded by militant fire while he was parachuting down and was killed on the ground.

Erdogan said Turkish pilots are obliged to take action within the rules of engagement in such situations, but stressed that the incident, which, he said, took place due to the mistake of the Russian pilot who failed to listen to the warnings, should not “affect the relations of two nations, particularly not strategic relations.”

“The effect of the incident on bilateral relations really saddens us.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said immediately after the incident that the downing of the plane would have “serious consequences” for the Moscow-Ankara ties.

Russia has imposed a raft of economic sanctions against Turkey since then, such as banning imports of some Turkish foods, reintroducing visas for Turkish nationals and stopping the sales of holiday packages to Turkey.

Putin also called the incident a “stab in the back, carried out by the accomplices of terrorists.” He demanded that Ankara apologize over the incident. Erdogan has, however, responded by saying that Turkey does not owe Russia an apology over the matter.

Russia began airstrikes against positions of the Daesh Takfiri terrorists and other militant groups in Syria on September 30 based on a request by the government in Damascus.

Putin-Erdogan meeting canceled

Meanwhile, in another sign of the deteriorating relations between Moscow and Ankara, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced on Monday that a bilateral meeting between Putin and his Turkish counterpart planned for December 15 in St. Petersburg would not take place.

The two sides had agreed upon the meeting on the sidelines of a G-20 meeting in Turkey, which was held before the shooting down of the Russian jet.

In a separate development on Monday, a commercial vessel under a Turkish flag was forced by a Russian Black Sea corvette and a coast guard boat to change its course as it was in the way of a Crimean energy firm's boats towing oil rigs.

It came a day after Russia said one of its warships was forced to fire warning shots at a Turkish boat in the Aegean Sea to avoid a collision.

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