Turkish Press Review

ISTANBUL

Anadolu Agency does not verify these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

Turkish dailies on Friday mainly dedicated their front pages to the escalating tension between Ankara and Moscow over the shooting down of a Russian warplane that Turkey said it violated its airspace on Nov. 24.

“Russians buy Daesh oil,” was SABAH’s headline, quoting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who spoke in the capital Ankara.

Erdogan strongly denounced Russia for dragging the name of his family members into allegations of illegal oil dealing with terrorist organization Daesh.

“Dragging my family into this issue is the unethical side of the incident,” Erdogan said.

HURRIYET wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “threatened” Turkey when he said: “Sanctions will not be limited to a ban on tomatoes.”

According to the newspaper Putin said: “Allah knows why they did it [downing the Russian warplane].”

Turkish newspapers also covered a meeting between the two countries’ foreign ministers, a first high-level encounter since the episode.

“First-time face-to-face [meeting],” was MILLIYET’s headline, reporting that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov met in the Serbian capital Belgrade, on the sidelines of a conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The daily wrote that the two leaders' meeting took around 40 minutes, but they made separate statements. Cavusoglu and Lavrov did not have a picture together, the newspaper added.

“It cannot go like this forever,” the daily quoted Cavusoglu as saying: “We are waiting with patience for a recovery of the relations.”

According to the newspaper, Lavrov said that the Russian side “heard nothing new,” after the meeting.

Turkish dailies also covered an agreement between Turkey and Azerbaijan to complete the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline Project, or TANAP, before 2018.

"We have reached an agreement [with Azerbaijan] to realize the TANAP project not in 2018 as planned, but before it," Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a joint press conference with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku.

TANAP is an integral part of the larger Southern Gas Corridor, which is projected to carry 16 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas from Azerbaijan to Europe via Turkey.

The project's capacity is planned to reach 23 bcm by 2023, and 31 bcm by 2026.

“Soviet-style propaganda,” was the headline of MILLIYET, which quoted Davutoglu who referred to Russian accusations that Turkey has allegedly been purchasing oil from Daesh.

"There was a Soviet propaganda machine during the Cold War which produced several lies that they believed first, and then expected the world to do so," Davutoglu said before his departure for Azerbaijan.

Turkish newspapers also heavily covered court ruling which handed down aggravated life imprisonment sentences to three people accused of the brutal murder of 20-year-old university student Ozgecan Aslan earlier this year.

Aslan was killed on Feb. 13 while she reportedly resisted a sexual assault in a minibus in Mersin, southern Turkey. Later, the attackers burnt her body; her charred remains were found two days after she was reported missing.

“Sleep well Ozgecan,” wrote HABERTURK, featuring a picture of the murdered girl’s mother holding a photograph of her daughter.

“Ozgecan ruling was acclaimed,” wrote HURRIYET, reporting that people in the courtroom applauded the decision.

Mersin penal court found the minibus driver, Ahmet Suphi Altindoken, 26, his father Necmettin Altindoken, 50, and his friend Fatih Gokce, 20, guilty.