Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday warned Moscow that it would be forced to “endure the consequences” if its jets continue to violate Turkish airspace, after Ankara reported a new border infringement incident by a Russian airplane.
NATO member Turkey said another Russian warplane violated its airspace on Friday, despite several warnings — two months after Turkey’s military shot down a Russian jet for crossing over its territory.
The past incident seriously strained the previously close ties between the two countries, damaging a strong economic partnership.
“We regard this infringement, which came despite all our warnings in Russian and in English, as an effort by Russia to escalate the crisis in the region,” Erdogan told reporters before departing on a Latin American tour.
“If Russia continues the violations of Turkey’s sovereign rights, it will be forced to endure the consequences,” he added.
Erdogan did not specify what those consequences might be.
Russian Ministry of Defence spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov denied that there was any violation of Turkey’s airspace and called the Turkish statements “unsubstantiated propaganda.”
His statement was carried by Russian state news agencies TASS and RIA Novosti.
Erdogan said he attempted to reach Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the issue, but that the Russian leader did not respond.
“These irresponsible steps do not help the Russian Federation, NATO-Russia relations or regional and global peace,” Erdogan said. “On the contrary, they are detrimental.”
The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Russian Su-34 crossed into Turkish airspace on Friday, ignoring several warnings in Russian and in English by Turkish radar units.
It said Ankara summoned the Russian ambassador to the ministry on Friday evening to “strongly protest” the violation. It was not clear where exactly the new infringement had occurred.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also called on Russia “to act responsibly and to fully respect NATO airspace,” but also urged “calm and de-escalation” of tensions between Moscow and Ankara.
“Russia must take all necessary measures to ensure that such violations do not happen again,” he said in a statement.
“NATO stands in solidarity with Turkey and supports the territorial integrity of our ally, Turkey,” Stoltenberg said.
There was no immediate comment on the incident from Moscow.
In November last year, Turkey shot down a Russian airplane that violated its airspace near Syria, touching off a crisis between the two countries. It was the first time in more than half a century that a NATO nation had shot down a Russian airplane.
Turkey shot down the Russian Su-24 warplane near the border with Syria on Nov. 24, saying it violated its airspace for 17 seconds, despite repeated warnings. Russia insists the airplane never entered Turkish airspace. One pilot and a Russian marine of a rescue party were killed in the incident.
The Russian military quickly sent missile systems to Syria and warned that it would fend off any threat to its aircraft. Moscow also punished Turkey by imposing an array of economic sanctions.
On Saturday, Stoltenberg said NATO had last month agreed to increase the presence of airborne early warning airplanes over Turkey to increase the country’s air defenses. He said the decision was taken before Friday’s incident.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
RSS