Latest reports say the crewmen were recovered in ok shape.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Syria had admitted it had shot down the plane and apologized, BBC Monitoring reported, citing Turkey's state news agency Anatolia.
Turkey said earlier it had lost contact with one of its military aircraft off its southeastern coast after it took off from Erhac airport in the eastern province of Malatya.
Turkish officials said Erdogan, who was returning to Ankara from Brazil on Friday evening, would convene a security meeting with the interior and foreign ministers and the chief of general staff. They did not say what would be discussed.
Turkey's military said a search and rescue operation was under way. Two crew were aboard the F-4 jet, Anatolia said.
The Middle East is primed to pop. The US and European economies are staggering along. Even China is facing a slowdown.
All we need is some trigger to make the whole world go boom and we could be looking at regional war.
2012 is proving to be quite interesting.
Call me a cynic, but the timing of this seems very convenient.
ReplyDeleteThe main question is whether the Syrian regime at the highest levels made a decision to shoot down a Turkish aircraft to further their own domestic agenda or it was done at mid or lower level?
ReplyDeleteThere's speculation the regime did it to involve Turkey so they could flesh out their foreign conspiracy domestic propaganda but unless Syria was fairly certain Turkey wouldn't respond significantly it sounds a bit too irrational. Of course given it's the Mideast and the home of the extreme conspiracy story it's difficult for Westerners to really gauge internal motivations.
this could get ugly quick if NATO gets involved, Article 5, an attack on one is an attack on all, if they were in international airspace and NATO invokes its self-defense mechanisms you have 28 nations against syria, and possibly iran as their ally, heaven help us.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me the Turks were doing a bit of sneaky low level border recon and got caught.
ReplyDeleteTurks now claiming that plane may have accidentally crossed border. Seems an admission to me.
No way given todays modern GPS that an accidental incursion could take place in my humble opinion, unless the pilot was distracted.