ANKARA: Turkey’s foreign minister on Tuesday slammed the threat of further US and Western sanctions on Ankara over its military cooperation with Russia as going “against our sovereign rights.” And Mevlut Cavusoglu was joined by his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in vowing to press ahead with strengthening links between the two countries. The comments came as the two ministers met in the Russian resort city of Sochi to discuss regional and international issues ahead of a planned meeting of presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan under the high-level Russian-Turkish Cooperation Council. Among bilateral issues, such as the construction of a nuclear power station and further development of the TurkStream gas pipeline, military cooperation with Ankara was praised by Moscow despite US sanctions under Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), a 2017 law targeting Russian defense industry exports.