Ties Between Turkey and Russia Strained Further

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Russia that it could lose Turkey’s friendship, after Russian warplanes twice violated Turkish airspace near the border with Syria. “If Russia loses a friend like Turkey with whom it has a lot of cooperation, it is going to lose a lot of things. It needs to know this,” Erdogan told a news conference. He accused Moscow and Iran of working together to maintain the “state terror” of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey is the only Muslim member of NATO, and said NATO has backed him by criticizing Russia. The NATO allies said this week that they “strongly protested” the violations by Russia and warned of the “extreme danger of such irresponsible behavior.” In another incident, Turkish military officials said that eight F-16 fighters were harassed by unidentified MIG-29 aircraft during a patrol flight on the border with Syria this week.