NEWSWATCH Wall Street Journal: “Russia Takes Aim at Turkish Economy Amid Fighter-Jet Spat. Turkish officials reject Vladimir Putin’s call for an apology.”
The Wall Street Journal covers Russia’s response to Turkey’s shoot-down of a Russian military jet.
Russia has reacted with fury to the incident and vowed to retaliate by clamping down on trade and business ties. … Turkish President … Erdogan dismissed Mr. Putin’s demands that Ankara apologize or offer compensation ….
Turkey has provided evidence that it gave repeated warnings to the Russian aircraft before firing upon it.
Turkish and U.S. officials said the Turkish pilots warned the Russian planes 10 times in five minutes that they were approaching Turkey’s airspace and that the requests to shift course went unanswered. The Turkish military later released recordings of the warnings.
… Putin repeated Russia’s position that the aircraft was in Syrian airspace when it was downed, and insisted that Turkey had broken international law.
Cutbacks in Russian trade with Turkey could impact Russian inflation. At the same time, Russian imports already were impacted the declining ruble previously.
Russia could suffer an increase in inflation, already running around 15%, as Turkey is among the top suppliers of fruit and vegetables to Russia with a share of the market between 15% and 20% …. * * * Russia’s imports from Turkey as well as from other countries has already shrunk substantially as the ruble lost more than 40% of its value against the dollar over the past year.
… Russia’s customs service [says that] imports from Turkey, which accounts for 4.6% of Russia’s international trade turnover, fell by 38.5% in the first nine months of this year.