Nazarbayev urges Russia, Turkey to set up commission for investigating Su-24 incident, to punish culprits
ASTANA. Nov 30 (Interfax) - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has urged Russia and Turkey to set up a commission which will look into the incident involving the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 bomber and to restore relations once every problem is resolved.
"No matter how difficult this may be, it is necessary to set up this joint commission, to resolve the matter rapidly, to find the culprits, to punish [them] and to restore relations. I am asking our friends in both Russia and Turkey to do so," the president said in Astana on Monday in his address to the Kazakh nation.
"We are very upset about what has happened between Russia and Turkey. We have heard about different nuances of that situation. Yet it is a fact that the Russian bomber did not attack Turkey, it was not routed for Turkey, it was routed for the fight against terrorists," he said.
"As friends and comrades-in-arms, [Russia and Turkey] should have found a common language rather than ruined relations they had been building for so many years. I am a person who has been working for years to reconcile positions of Russia and Turkey and to make them friendly. Everything which has been built over years may now be wasted," Nazarbayev said.
Relations between Russia and Turkey rapidly deteriorated after the Turkish Air Force downed a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 bomber. The Turkish side claimed that the bomber had violated its airspace. Russia insisted that the plane was downed and fell in Syria. The two foreign ministries recommended their citizens to abstain from visiting each other's countries, and Russia imposed economic sanctions on Turkey on November 28.