Al Jazeera News :Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan voiced “sadness” on Saturday over the downing of a Russian fighter jet by Turkish forces, saying he wished it had not happened.Addressing supporters, Erdogan again defended Turkey’s action and criticised Russia for its moves in Syria before expressing his regrets.”We wish it hadn’t happened, but it happened. I hope something like this doesn’t happen again,” Erdogan said. The Turkish president said both sides should approach the issue in a more positive way.Erdogan renewed a call for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the UN’s climate change conference in Paris that starts on Monday.Earlier on Saturday, Turkey issued a travel warning urging its nationals to delay non-urgent trips to Russia.Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said it issued the warning because Turkish travellers were facing “problems” in Russia. It said Turks should delay travel plans until “the situation becomes clear”.Turkey’s downing of the Russian military jet on Tuesday – the first time in half a century that a NATO member shot down a Russian plane – has drawn a harsh response from Moscow, which Erdogan has dismissed as emotional and indecorous.Russia has since restricted tourist travel, left Turkish trucks stranded at the border, confiscated large quantities of Turkish food imports, and started preparing a raft of broader economic sanctions.Russia was set to announce further sanctions against Turkey later on Saturday, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.Peskov, who is a close confidant of Putin, accused Turkey of having manipulated the evidence of Tuesday’s incident. The Russian Su-24 bomber had not crossed Turkish airspace as Ankara claimed, Peskov said, adding the map presented by Turkey to show that it did was manipulated. Erdogan told supporters during a speech in Bayburt in northeast Turkey on Friday that Russia “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.” Putin has so far refused to talk to Erdogan because Ankara has not yet apologised for the downing of the jet, a Putin aide said.Erdogan has said Turkey deserves the apology because its airspace was violated.The nearly five-year-old Syrian civil war has been complicated by Russian air strikes in defence of President Bashar al-Assad.Turkey and regional powers have accused Russia of targeting moderate armed groups fighting Assad.The frayed relations could also impact two major planned projects – a TurkStream gas pipeline and the Akkuyu nuclear power plant – between the two countries.Turkey and Russia have also sparred over the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, with each side accusing the other of being soft on “terrorism”.
