After Turkey downs jet, Russia deploys anti-aircraft missiles in Syria

Tensions in the Middle East have escalated after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane, with the Turkish President accusing Russia of deceit and Moscow announcing it will deploy anti-aircraft missiles to Syria.

There has been bellicose rhetoric on both sides, missiles are being deployed, and Russia and Turkey have each accused the other of supporting terrorism.

Now the economic weapons are being unsheathed.

Russia's Agriculture Ministry has announced it is strengthening controls over food and agriculture imports from Turkey. A statement on the Agriculture Ministry website said there would be "additional checks on the border and at production sites in Turkey" in response to what it said were "repeated violations of Russian standards by Turkish producers."

Russia's Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev is quoted on the ministry's website saying that roughly 15% of Turkish agricultural products fail to meet Russian standards.

In addition, Russia's state-run consumer protection body said it had concerns about the quality and safety of children's clothing, furniture and cleaning products originating from Turkey.

Some Russian tour operators have already said they will be curtailing travel to Turkey -- a favorite destination for many Russian vacationers.

Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said on his ministry's Twitter feed that the country would instal S-400 defense missile systems at its Hmeymim air base near Latakia, on Syria's Mediterranean coast.

The missiles have a range of 250 kilometers (155 miles), according to the missilethreat.com website. The Turkish border is less than 45 kilometers (30 miles) away.

And Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow has "serious doubts" that Turkey's downing of the Sukhoi Su-24 bomber near the Turkish-Syrian border Tuesday was a spur of the moment act.

"It looks very much like a planned provocation," Lavrov said.

The unusual clash between Russia and a NATO member highlights the dangerous and unpredictable nature of the Syrian war, which has drawn global powers, including the United States, into a chaotic and complex conflict.

Turkey says Russian planes breached its sovereignty

Turkey and Russia have starkly different positions on Syria, with Ankara supporting rebels opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a key ally of Moscow.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned what he said was the violation of airspace by Russian warplanes, calling it an infringement of his country's sovereignty. Turkey had repeatedly complained in the past of similar incidents.

He charged Russia with propping up the Assad government -- a regime he said was inflicting terrorism on its own people. His remarks came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Turkey of being "the terrorists' accomplices" for shooting down a plane he claimed was on an anti-terrorism mission.

Erdogan disputed that claim in a speech.

"There is no Daesh" in the area where the Russian planes were flying, Erdogan said, using another name for ISIS. "Do not deceive us! We know the locations of Daesh."

Contacts between Turkish and Russian officials

"None of the targets that ... the Russians were going after had anything to do with ISIS. Those were all those Turkmen groups," said CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel.

The Turkmen minority in that part of northern Syria has strong ties to the Turkish government, which wants to afford them a degree of protection. Anyone who bombs that area attacks "our brothers and sisters -- Turkmen," Erdogan has said.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said his country doesn't want to "drive a wedge" into its relationship with Russia, according to the semiofficial Anadolu news agency. And the two countries' foreign ministers have already spoken by phone and plan to meet in person over the coming days, the news agency reported, citing a Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman.

Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry said Lavrov "expressed indignation" over the incident during the phone call.

Two high-ranking Russian military officers have visited the Turkish general staff since the plane was shot down, Anadolu reported.

"Every question about the incident has been answered," the general staff said, according to the news agency. It said that images from radar displays were shown to the Russian attaches during visits in Ankara.

Even as Erdogan has insisted Turkey doesn't want to escalate the situation, the anger in his words -- and those of Putin -- showed that the conflict in Syria has now churned up a new and alarming wave of international turbulence.

The stakes are high in Syria, where the United States, Russia and a swarm of other global, regional and local forces are entangled in the civil war.

Courtesy CNN

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