Turkey warns Russia not to ‘play with fire’ as jet row escalates further

Moscow slapped sanctions on Ankara on Friday as the war of words over a downed Russian warplane escalated, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warning Russia not to “play with fire." Russia announced it was halting a visa-free regime for Turkish visitors, after threatening a raft of retaliatory economic measures to punish the NATO member state. Erdogan nevertheless said he wanted a direct meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin when the two leaders are in Paris next week for the U.N. climate summit. But Moscow responded coolly, saying Turkey has yet to apologize for shooting down the jet on the Syrian border.

It is playing with fire to go as far as mistreating our citizens who have gone to Russia. We really attach a lot of importance to our relations with Russia. … We don’t want these relations to suffer harm in any way.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Relations between the former Cold War antagonists are at their lowest in recent memory. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Turkey had "crossed the line of what is acceptable” and warned the incident could severely undermine both its national and regional interests. Moscow has ruled out any military response but has pledged broad measures targeting entire sectors of the Turkish economy including tourism, agriculture and possibly key energy projects. The tug-of-war between the two countries has been driven by a clash of their leaders’ personal ambitions.

The international community should earnestly strengthen coordination and cooperation in the fight against terrorism to avoid this kind of incident from happening again.

Chinese foreign ministry

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