Barack Obama led calls on Tuesday for Turkey and Russia to end their dispute over the downing of a Russian fighter jet and focus instead on the real enemy –Islamic State jihadis.
“I want to be very clear: Turkey is a Nato ally. The US supports Turkish rights to defend itself and its airspace and its territory,” Obama said after meeting his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in Paris.
“We all have a common enemy and that is Isil, and I want to make sure we focus on that threat,” Obama said, using an alternative name for Isis.
It came as Obama’s defence secretary, Ash Carter, said the US would increasingly rely on special operations forces to battle Isis fighters in Iraq and Syria, where the extremists have seized huge swaths of territory including oil fields used to fund their activities.
The US president said he was sure Russia would soon change tack in Syria and back a political solution to the bloody conflict after years of supporting long-time ally President Bashar al-Assad, who Washington insists must step down.
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg urged Turkey and Russia to find a way to avoid a repeat of the jet incident, which threatens to scupper efforts to forge a common front against Isis in the wake of attacks in Paris claimed by the group that left 130 dead.
Erdoğan, who has demanded that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, provide evidence to back up charges Ankara trades in oil with Isis, said he too was keen to move on. “We are always willing to resort to the diplomatic language ... we want to avoid the tensions,” he said.
Stoltenberg, speaking at the start of a two-day meeting of Nato foreign ministers, said the focus should be on “how we can de-escalate and calm tensions [and find] mechanisms so that we can avoid the type of incident we saw last week.”
The Turkish air force shot down the Russian jet last week for allegedly violating its airspace near the Syrian border.
One Russian pilot was shot dead in Syria after parachuting from the burning aircraft, while the second was found safe. One Russian soldier was killed in a rescue operation.
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