Putin to Erdogan, “Illegally fly over Syria again and we will shoot you down”

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Putin Threatens Turkish Jets in Syria as Erdogan Spat Escalates

`Let them try and fly there now,' Putin tells reporters

• Russia and U.S. positions on Syria moving closer together

Vladimir Putin escalated his confrontation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over last month’s downing of a Russian bomber, saying relations are beyond repair while declaring Syria a no-fly zone for Turkish military aircraft.

“Turkey used to violate Syrian airspace all the time,” Putin said Thursday during his annual news conference in Moscow. “Let them try and fly there now,” he said, pointing out that Russia’s most advanced air-defense system, the S-400, is covering all of Syria.

President Vladimir Putin speaks during his annual press conference.

Photographer: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images

The Nov. 24 shoot-down, the first by a NATO member of a Russian aircraft in decades, came less than two months after Putin joined Syria’s civil war on the side of Bashar al-Assad. That has complicated efforts by the U.S. and its allies, which have been bombing Islamic State targets there for almost two years, to end a conflict that’s killed a quarter million people and sparked Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II.

 

Putin reiterated his refusal to allow outside forces to decide Syria’s fate, but he said Russia and the U.S. are moving closer to an agreement on how to end the war and form a new government. Russia’s plan for Syria, which is wedged between Turkey and Iraq, is generally in line with a UN resolution drafted by the U.S. that will be discussed at talks in New York on Friday, he said.

‘Kiss Americans’

“Russia will do all it can to resolve the situation in Syria,” Putin said.

Putin has demanded an apology from Erdogan after a U.S.-made F-16 operated by Turkey destroyed a SU-24 bomber, killing one of the pilots.

Turkey should have called and apologized if it was an accident, Putin said at the news conference. He said he wasn’t aware of any U.S. involvement in the attack, speculating that Turkey may have been trying to curry favor with the world’s largest military power.

“If someone in Turkey decided to kiss Americans on a certain body part, I don’t know whether it was right or not,” Putin said.

 

Senior officials in Moscow and Ankara say the volatile, sometimes impetuous personalities of Putin and Erdogan leaders exacerbate the tensions because neither wants to been seen as giving in.

‘Allah’ Punishment

Both Putin, 63, and Erdogan, 61, have ruled for more than decade and been criticized for autocratic tendencies, as well as their unwillingness to back down under pressure. Both have called for reasserting national glory, drawing comparisons to their imperial predecessors -- czars and sultans. Both invested in what appeared to be a special relationship based on that bond.

But those days are long gone.

Erdogan traveled to Qatar this month for talks on finding alternatives to Russia for natural gas supplies. While there, he said Turkey will have not choice “but to take countermeasures” if Russian reactions to the plane incident, such as economic sanctions, continue.

“What did they think, that we’d run away?” Putin told reporters Thursday. “That’s not the kind of country Russia is.”

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