Recently, there has been a lot of criticism of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the shooting of a Russian warplane.

There is no doubt that the decision to open fire was made after repeated warnings were issued to the Russian pilot. However, the surviving Russian airman denies that the jet flew into Turkish territory.

I am sure that Turkey would not have taken such a serious step against a powerful country like Russia without considering the consequences.

Various diplomats believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin has his own agenda in many things. Putin is leader of a country that is supposedly suffering sanctions as a result of its involvement in Ukraine and the abrupt annexation of Crimea.

There is also a strong suspicion that it was a Russian missile that downed a commercial flight over Ukraine not so long ago. And now he is also supporting President Bashar al-Assad by eliminating all his opposition from Syria.

One must also remember the many occasions when his warplanes deliberately flew over British airspace, and the British airforce had to scramble its jets to kick out the Russian planes in its territory.

So I think yes, we should give a lot of credit to Turkey for standing up to the bully boy from Russia.