Turkey has a new line for Russia - 'our patience has a limit'

ROME (Reuters) - Turkey's foreign minister said Ankara's patience with Russia "has a limit" after Moscow's "exaggerated" reaction to a weekend naval incident between the two countries, an Italian newspaper reported on Monday.

A Russian destroyer fired warning shots at a Turkish vessel in the Aegean on Sunday to avoid a collision and summoned the Turkish military attache over the incident.

"Ours was only a fishing boat, it seems to me that the reaction of the Russian naval ship was exaggerated," Mevlut Cavusoglu told Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview.

"Russia and Turkey certainly have to re-establish the relations of trust that we have always had, but our patience has a limit," Cavusoglu said.

The incident is likely to heighten tensions between the two nations who are at odds over Syria and Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane last month.

Cavusoglu's comments echoed remarks he made Friday, before Russia fired warning shots this weekend. The Associated Press reported that the foreign minister said "Turkey wants to overcome tensions with Russia but that Moscow is using 'every opportunity' to hit at Turkey."

Cavusoglu told NTV television on Friday, according to the AP: "If we are not responding to all that they have done until now, it is not because we are afraid or because any psychology of guilt."

Cavusoglu said on Monday that Russia had already "put itself in a ridiculous position" with accusations by its President Vladimir Putin that Turkey had shot down the jet to protect oil supplies from Islamic State.

"No-one believed it" he said.

He also criticized Russia's military intervention in Syria, saying it was aimed at propping up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, not combating Islamic State.

"Unfortunately Russia is not in Syria to fight terrorists," he said, adding that only 8 percent of its air strikes had been aimed at Islamic State while 92 percent were against other groups hostile to Assad.

Cavusoglu also said air strikes were not sufficient to defeat Islamic State and soldiers on the ground were necessary, according to the interview.

(Reporting By Gavin Jones; Editing by Hugh Lawson)