Istanbul – Turkey’s Erdogan Asks For Meeting With Putin But Warns Russia Not To ‘Play With Fire’

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan warned Russia not to “play with fire” on Friday, but added he did not want to harm relations with Moscow, comments that look more likely to inflame than quell the dispute over a downed Russian bomber this week.

Relations between the former Cold War antagonists are at their worst in recent memory after Turkey shot down the jet near the Syrian border on Monday. Russia has threatened economic retaliation against Ankara, which Erdogan has dismissed as “emotional” and “unfitting”.

“We very sincerely recommend to Russia not to play with fire,” Erdogan told supporters during a speech in Bayburt, in northeast Turkey. “We really attach a lot of importance to our relations with Russia… We don’t want these relations to suffer harm in any way.”

Earlier in the day Russia said that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan had requested a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Paris on Nov. 30.

Erdogan said he may speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a climate summit in Paris next week, a discussion that would be welcomed by the United States and EU, both of which fear the spat has distracted from the battle against Islamic State militants in Syria.

“A proposal from the Turkish side about a meeting at the level of heads of state has been delivered to the president,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on a conference call on Friday. “That’s all I can say.”

Putin and Erdogan will attend the global climate summit that begins in Paris on Nov. 30.

Putin has so far refused to contact Erdogan because Ankara does not want to apologize for the downing of the jet, Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Friday.

Peskov also said that Erdogan had telephoned Putin seven or eight hours after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane on Tuesday. Erdogan told the France 24 television channel on Thursday that he had called Putin after the jet downed but that the Russian leader had not yet called him back.

“This request was also delivered to the president,” Peskov said.

Erdogan said Turkey downed the jet as a result of what he called the automatic enforcement of the rules of engagement.

Russia’s lower house speaker, Sergei Naryshkin, said on Friday that Moscow had the right to make a military response, calling the incident an “intentional murder of our soldiers”.