Turkey does not owe Russia an apology for this week’s downing of a Russian fighter jet, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday in response to a demand from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin had earlier criticised Turkey for not apologising for Turkish fighter jets shooting down the Russian Su-24 bomber as it returned from a mission in support of Syrian government forces.

“We have not yet heard an apology from the highest political level of Turkey. Nor do we hear proposals to repair the damage or promises to punish the perpetrators for the crime committed,” Tass news agency quoted Putin as saying.

In in an interview with broadcaster CNN International, Erdogan said: “I think if there is a side that has to apologise, then we are not it. The ones who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologise.”

And he stressed that the Turkish pilots who did the shooting were only doing their duty.

Ankara claimed the plane crossed its airspace despite repeated warnings over a five-minute period, while Moscow insists it was over Syrian territory at all times.

One Russian pilot died, apparently from Syrian rebel gunfire after he ejected, while the other landed safely and was rescued by Russian and Syrian special forces.

“One gets the impression that the Turkish leadership is deliberately steering Russian-Turkish relations into a dead end. This is regrettable,” Putin said.

Putin said later during a press conference after talks with French President Francois Hollande that the Turkish attack was unexpected and that it had not deployed air defence systems because it had considered Turkey a friendly state.

“It could not even occur to us that we could receive a blow from a country, which we used to consider our ally,” Putin said, according to Russian news agency Itar-Tass .

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev meanwhile described the “attack” as an “act of aggression towards Russia,” Tass reported.

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the downing of the jet looked “like a planned provocation”.

Russia, a major ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, started to launch an air campaign in Syria on Sept 30.

Turkey is a major backer of Syrian rebels and has previously warned Russia not to violate its airspace.

Earlier yesterday, Erdogan dismissed claims that his country was buying oil from Islamic State in what appeared to have been a veiled response to other Russian accusations.

Erdogan said those who accuse Turkey of buying oil from Islamic State, which is active in Syria and Iraq, are “liars”, the online edition of Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman reported.

“If you are seeking the source of weaponry and financial power of Daesh, the first place to look is the Assad regime and countries that act with it,” the report quoted Erdogan as saying, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Putin however doubled down on the claims about oil, saying it was “hard to believe” that the government was unaware of oil being supplied on the black market on an industrial scale.

Import controls

Russia also announced import controls on Turkish agriculture imports and warned Russian citizens against travel to Turkey.

Russia says its airstrikes in Syria are targeting Islamic State and other extremist groups.

The Syrian opposition and its backers have repeatedly said the strikes are hitting moderate rebels fighting both al-Assad and Islamic State.

Warplanes, believed to be Russian, mounted yesterday a series of strikes near the Syrian-Turkish border for the second consecutive day, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the bombardment targeted a rebel-held area between the towns of Aziz and Bab as-Salamah on the northern outskirts of Aleppo in northern Syria.

No casualties were reported.

On Wednesday, at least four people were killed when jets hit near Bab as-Salamah, a main border crossing between Syria and Turkey.

Turkey closed the crossing in March.

Local activists said the jets had bombed at least three trucks carrying goods and relief aid.

“Those killed were mainly the truck drivers,” Omar al-Halabi, an Aleppo-based activist, said.

Meanwhile, the first US special forces arrived in northern Syria to train Syrian moderate opposition and Kurdish fighters against the Islamic State, a monitoring group and a Kurdish source confirmed.

The US troops arrived in Kobane and al-Hassakeh province to train the newly formed Arab-Kurd coalition, Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told dpa .

In late October, US official said that a small contingent of special operations troops will be deployed to northern Syria to coordinate with local forces against Islamic State militants.

“Fewer than 50 special forces will be deployed as part of efforts to bolster the fight against Islamic State following a review of US strategy,” the official told dpa then.

More than 250,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Syria’s conflict since it erupted in 2011.

- dpa