"Russia’s account conflicted with Turkey’s, with its military saying the the fighter jet had apparently been downed after coming under fire from the ground. It also said it could prove the plane never left Syrian airspace.
Footage from private broadcaster Haberturk TV showed a warplane going down in flames in a woodland area, a long plume of smoke trailing behind it. The plane went down in area known by Turks as “Turkmen Mountain” in northern Syria near the Turkish border, Haberturk said."
What a mess.
Hm, I am not that pessimistic. In this kind of situation, the big players (the ones that matter, NATO and Russia) have all the self-interest of the world in not allowing things to escalate out of control.
Strongly-worded communiqués will be issued; there will be diplomatic fallout; if it is proven that Turkey indeed shot down the plane then compensation will be demanded if the plane never left Syrian territory, or apologies will be issued if the plane indeed intruded into Turkey. And if it was indeed the Syrians who shot it down, then it would be a question of “where the heck did they get their hands on anti-aircraft missiles”.
Interestingly, Turkey says that they shot the plane down, and the Russians say that it was shot down by Syrian rebels. If the Russians had any interest in escalating things, they would have argued immediately that Turkey had shot their jet down.
I sincerely think that all the parties involved will do their best to calm the waters after this incident. I don’t foresee nukes flying around, or NATO and Russia getting into a shooting conflict.
It is my understanding that in that part of Syria ISIS has no foothold. It is held by Turkmen rebels who are certainly anti-Assad but not ISIS. I don’t think Russia cares much about world opinion but to anyone paying attention this shows what their motivation is.
Do people not realise that World Wars are started this ways. Russia trying to.protect a client from Western machinations. Where have I seen this movie before.
A rebel group opened fire on one of the pilots who ejected and they now have the body. They want some prisoners released in order to release the body though. They didn’t really mean to kill him, they were just trying to shoot down the parachute.
Exactly. The message is, “Keep the fighting on the other side of the border, please.”
Imagine if this kind of shit was happening in Mexico. We would have a string of Patriot missle batteries along the southern border, and absolutely anything that strayed over would go down in flames.
Usually the two parties involved, assuming they are not active enemies, will find a way to resolve this without adding another party to the fray. Usually.
I expect the usual outcome here.
There will, of course, be some arguing and posturing beforehand, but it will get sorted out and I don’t expect WWIII to break out over this particular incident. Buy yeah, nerve-wracking because you just never know… right?
He’s quoting Admiral Painter (played the the recently deceased Fred Dalton Thompson) from the film version of The Hunt For Red October.
No, this incident by itself will not lead to a direct conflict between larger nations, but the situation has the potential to ferment larger conflicts over disagreements in strategy, aims, and ultimate goals. However, Putin needs something like this kind of conflict to demonstrate the supposed strength of Russia, and depending on who wins the 2016 elections the same may be true for the US. Open conflict is almost never ultimately beneficial to the leaders who seek it, but that doesn’t stop posturing matches from extending out of hand, and the less coordinated the participants are in their response the more likely it is. This is, of course, what ISIS seeks; an apocalyptic conflict between major nations and will actively do everything they can to stir that pot.
I am sure that Vladimir Putin would like to see Turkey break up-that way, he can support the Syrian state and also provide a new country for the Kurds. Face it, Kemal Ataturk’s experiment was going to fail anyway-reactionary Islam has doomed it. get set for a reshuffling of the deck in the ME-a whole new crop of nation-states are coming!