turkey's jet fighter

Note on Syria Shooting Down of Turkish Jet Fighter

It appears that shooting down of a Turkish F-4 jet fighter by the Syrian air defense system, could cut short an attempt by Turkey to begin stage-managing provocations to escalate operations against Syria.  


It should be noted that the Turks do this all the time with Greece, constantly overflying Greek airspace in areas where they want to challenge Greek territorial sovereignty. Their aircraft linger until they provoke a response from Greece, normally when Greece sends up fighters, at which point the Turks retreat. A few years ago, this led to a crash that left one Greek pilot dead.


Yesterday, the Turks may have expected Syria to respond the same way as Greece does, so they could create an incident or just begin escalating harassment until a real incident could trigger a clash. The Syrians obviously were not going to play that game and shot down the fighter, demonstrating in the process that their ground-based air defense systems are indeed effective.

Meanwhile Turkey's English-language {Today's Zaman} reports that Turkish state television interviewed witnesses on the country's Mediterranean coast, near the Syrian border, who said they saw two low-flying fighter jets pass overhead in the morning in the direction of Syrian waters, and saw only one return, which tends to confirm Syria's claims that the aircraft were in their territorial airspace.

The Turkish government held a Security Summit chaired by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday. It lasted two hours and ten minutes and was attended by Chief of General Staff Necdet Ozel, Minister of the Interior Idris Naim Sahin, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, National Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz and National Intelligence Organization Undersecretary Hakan Fidan and a last-minute addition of Air Force Commander Mehmet Erten.