Turkey Does Not Intend to Escalate Tension with Russia?

• 12.01.2015, 18:44
•  EEU,  Region,  World

The Turkish-Russian mutual accusations and threats continue. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin rejects to meet the Turkish President, while Tayyip Erdogan, in his turn, says he does not intend to apologize for shooting down the Russian Su-24 aircraft. As a result, the region faces new and more dangerous challenges.

Turkey enjoys support in its actions by NATO. Turkey became member of the Alliance in 1952. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the North Atlantic Alliance was pledging support to Turkey in its efforts to defend its borders, Hurriyet reports. "Turkey has the right to defend itself and its airspace," said Stoltenberg.

Despite the threats, the Turkish side signals that it does not intend to escalate tensions. Particularly, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu when commenting on the possibility of the Russian sanctions against Turkey, said: "We will not escalate tension". He added Russians have been friendly towards Turkish people and "for many Russians, Antalia is a second home". "We hope Russia will reconsider these measures, which will be against our common interests," Davutoglu said.

In his turn Erdogan announced that Turkey is not going to act on strong emotions. "We have shown our good intentions from the first day of the accident, we say we are ready to meet Putin. Now we look forward to the statements from the Russian side. We are going to act patiently," Erdogan said in Paris. At the same time according to RIA Novosti, expressed his regret about the worsening of the Russian-Turkish relations, noting that he himself has done a lot to build those relations.

After the downing of the Russian aircraft the sanctions and threats of other restrictions by Russia are some kind of logical, taking into consideration the fact that this is the first time since 1952 that a NATO member has shot down a Russian plane.

Thus, a superpower like Russia, which fights for the establishment of a bipolar world order, cannot react to the downing of its aircraft in other way or softly, especially when it is Russia’s first official loss since the beginning of airstrikes in Syria on September 30.