News Digest

Sorry the hardest word: Turkey remains defiant over Russian jet

Turkey’s prime minister dismissed on Monday 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. Six 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. “No country should ask us to apologise,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said following a meeting with NATO’s secretary general at the alliance headquarters in Brussels.

The protection of our land borders, our airspace, is not only a right, it is a duty.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu

Following the meeting with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg in which he won the alliance’s firm support for the right to self-defense, Davutoglu also warned that such incidents continued to be a risk as long as Russia and the U.S-led coalition bombing Islamic State in Syria worked separately. While Russia says it is also targeting Islamic State, most of its air strikes have been against other Assad opponents, including groups actively supported by Turkey. Moscow has imposed sanctions on Turkish goods and has urged the Russian people to boycott holidays to Turkey and any food, such as tomatoes, from Turkey.

If there are two coalitions functioning in the same airspace against ISIL, these types of incidents will be difficult to prevent.

Prime Minister Davutoglu