Turkey warns Russia not to 'play with fire' over downed jet

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Turkish President Erdogan has warned Russia's President Putin not to "play with fire" over his country's downing of a Russian jet.

In a televised speech, Mr Erdogan said he wanted to meet Mr Putin "face-to-face" at climate talks in Paris to resolve the issue.

But Mr Putin has refused as Turkey is not ready to apologise, an aide said.

Russia has also decided to suspend its visa-free arrangement with Turkey, Russia's foreign minister said.

Turkey says the jet was in its airspace when it was targeted, but Russia insists it was flying over Syria.

"I would like to meet [Mr Putin] face-to-face in Paris," said Mr Erdogan. "I would like to bring the issue to a reasonable point. We are disturbed that the issue has been escalated."

But he also said Turkey did not want to damage its relationship with Russia.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that the incident could severely undermine Turkey's interests.

"We believe that the Turkish leadership has crossed the line of what is acceptable," he said at the start of talks with Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem in Moscow.

Mr Lavrov said that Russia was cancelling its visa-free travel regime with Turkey, starting from 1 January.

Turkey and Russia have important economic links. Russia is Turkey's second-largest trading partner, while more than 3m Russian tourists visited Turkey last year.

Russia's prime minister Dmitry Medvedev has also warned that food imports and joint investment projects could be affected.

• Where key countries stand on the Syrian conflict
• What future for Turkey-Russia relations?
• What we know about downing of jet

The Russian SU-24 bomber was shot down on Tuesday, causing it to crash into a mountainside in a rebel-held area close to the Turkish border.

One of the two Russian pilots was killed by gunfire as he parachuted from the burning jet. The other pilot was rescued by Russian and Syrian special forces.

The Turkish military says it sent a number of warnings to the Russian jet before firing a missile, some 17 seconds after the plane entered Turkish air space.

The surviving Russian pilot has said he received no such warning and was adamant the plane did not stray out of Syrian air space.

After the incident, Turkey was reported to have suspended air strikes against Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria as part of "a mutual decision taken with Russia, which has also halted its aerial campaign near the Turkish border", Turkish media quoted officials as saying.

IS claimed the 13 November attacks in Paris which killed 130 people, and a group's affiliate has said it bombed a Russian passenger plane in October, killing all 224 passengers on board.

However, Russia and Turkey are pursuing different aims in Syria.

Russia has been carrying out air strikes against opponents of President Bashar al-Assad since late September.

But Turkey, which is a member of a US-led coalition, insists Mr Assad must step down before any political solution to the crisis is found.

Russia's culinary diplomacy

Russia is tightening controls over food imports from Turkey, saying that 15% of the produce does not meet its standards. This is not the first time Russia has used food safety as a means of expressing its anger at a foreign state:

• Georgia wine - Banned in 2006 citing health risks at the same time as Georgia was revealing a more pro-Western stance and ambitions to join Nato
• Ukraine chocolate - Confectionery banned in 2013, again citing health standards, as Ukraine sought closer Western ties
• Western produce - In 2014, destroyed mountains of cheese, bacon, fruit and other produce imported from Western nations in anger at EU-US sanctions over the Ukraine crisis

Russia mixes food and foreign policy