I am told they have separate swimming areas for men and women.
Turkey Shoots Down Russian Warplane.
I knew there was a reason I liked Turkey.
A 17 second intrusion?
Or maybe just one big one.
You have a cite for that? I know they’ve been bombing kurds but I don’t see where they have been supporting ISIS. I thought they were supporting Turkmen Syrians, are these Turkmen Syrians actually part of ISIS?
Is there anything close to the border to shoot at or photograph? How long was Flight 007 in Russian airspace as I comparison? I am too lazy to look it up.
I think they’re one of the “moderate” rebels. Which means they’re probably affiliated with al Qaida, altho it’s not polite to mention this, because it leads to uncomfortable questions like, “How are these guys supposed to be an improvement over the Assad regeim?” and “Why do we consider these people to be our allies, again?”
FWIW, if you look at the Wikipedia page for the shootdown (because of course there’s one), there’s a small… panhandle?.. jutting down into Syrian territory, and this is apparently where the Russian jet is supposed to have intruded.
It’s not a very useful comparison. You can look at the wiki article of the incident if you overcome your laziness.
If you think the entire Syrian opposition is either ISIL or affiliated with Al Qaeda, you’re simply mistaken. The opposition includes a wide range of political affiliations, from extremist and terrifying to small militias who seem to have no agenda other than protecting their neighborhood. Complicating an easy narrative that you suggest is that sometimes moderate and extremist groups form temporary alliances, such as to coordinate attacks on the Syrian military.
The idea that the opposition is comprised of terrorists is nothing more than Assad propaganda that some people, for whatever reason, have embraced.
There is news reporting that the First Coastal Brigade, which is associated with the non-extremist Free Syrian Army, was involved in the subsequent attack on the Russian search and rescue helicopter.
This seems to have been the case here as well:
The Russian claim that they were only bombing ISIS is clearly a brazen lie. The Turkmen have sometimes allied with Al-Qaeda, but never with ISIS.
Then there’s the possibility that the Russian attacks on the Turkmen were…
So once again Russia seems to be working towards their primary goal of maintaining control over Latakia and Tartus.
Russia complains that the shooting down of their warplane was unprovoked and unannounced? (Never mind Turkey released the audio telling them to turn back) Yet when they shot down KAL 007, they never warned that civilian airliner, and thereafter claimed they were justified in shooting it down and killing almost 270 people.
Give them an inch …
That may have been what the Turks were thinking.
Found some relevant info on Listverse today. They posted a list of 10 Suspicious Deaths Of Whistle-Blowers. Of interest to this discussion is #8, Serna Shim. She was an American/Iranian journalist who discovered that ISIS fighters were being smuggled into Syria from Turkey, in vehicles labelled for the World Food Organization.
After she reported this, Turkish intelligence accused her of being a foreign spy, and 2 days later she died when her car was smashed by a cement mixer.
So, perhaps Russia had a good reason for bombing those “food trucks.” Which, last I heard, no relief agency has claimed as theirs.