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Moments ago a big black geopolitical swan landed when newswires lit up with headlines that a Turkish F-16 shot down what was initially said to be an unidentified warplane near the Syrian border after it violated Turkey's airspace on Tuesday, a Turkish military official said, but the nationality of the downed aircraft was not immediately clear.
The Russian jet crashed in the mountainous Jabal Turkmen area of Latakia, where air strikes and fighting between rebels and Syrian government forces were reported earlier on Tuesday.
According to Reuters, Turkish F16s warned the jet repeatedly over the airspace violations before shooting it down.
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.
Minutes later, the Turkish Lira sank like a rock while risk assets across Europe tumbled when the Turkish presidency confirmed that, as many had expected, the jet was a Russian fighter jet, which the Russian Defense Ministry later said was a Su-24. The Su-24 jet was warned after violating Turkish airspace and was then downed in line with Turkey’s rules of engagement, Anadolu says, citing officials at the presidency.
According to Todays' Szaman, in a statement, the Turkish military said a plane of unknown origin was shot down after it violated the Turkish airspace despite repeated warnings. The aircraft was warned 10 times in 5 minutes, the military said.
However, while moments ago the Russian defense ministry confirmed that the shot down plane was indeed one of its own in what will be deemed a clear act of aggression by a NATO-member country against Russia, the Russian defense ministry said it could prove the aircraft was over Syria for the entire flight.
Meanwhile, Turkish media reported that either one or both of the pilots may have been captured by Turkmen forces located in the region.
This huge escalation in the Syrian proxy war, one where a NATO country has openly attacked a non-NATO country (if Russia is correct and it did not violate Turkish airspace), comes after Turkey called this week for a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss attacks on Turkmens in neighboring Syria, and last week Ankara summoned the Russian ambassador to protest the bombing of their villages.
We await a formal reaction by Russia, one which we doubt will be calm, cool and collected and may in fact see the Turkish aggression as an act of war if indeed the Russian Su never entered Turkish territory.
"So far, we have not heard the reason for the crash of our attack aircraft from the Defense Ministry. We know for sure that the aircraft was in Syrian airspace, over the territory of Syria," Peskov said, noting that the ministry's first statement on the crash was based on preliminary information.
"It would be wrong to make some kind of assumptions right now, to make any statements until we have the complete picture. Therefore, we just have to be patient. This is a very serious incident, but again, it is impossible to say anything without complete information," he added.
"It can be assumed that the president… will touch upon this issue during the talk with the king, and that there will be some kind of a reaction," Peskov told reporters when asked whether Putin would make a statement on the matter.
At first blush it is not clear how the airspace violating jet could have received "10 warnings" in the several seconds it took to cross what the Turks claim was the offending Turkish territory, especially since the plane ultimately crashed in Syrian territory.
A few hours ago, Turkey decided that it would be a good idea to shoot down a Russian Su-24 near the Syrian border. It was the first time in nearly 60 years that a NATO member has shot down a Russian warplane.
There are competing accounts as to what led to the “incident”:
- Russia: “So far, we have not heard the reason for the crash of our attack aircraft from the Defense Ministry. We know for sure that the aircraft was in Syrian airspace, over the territory of Syria,"
- Turkey: "We warned them to avoid entering Turkish airspace before they did, and we warned them many times. Our findings show clearly that Turkish airspace was violated multiple times. And they violated it knowingly.”
So, as The Kremlin contemplates how best to respond to what is quite clearly the most serious escalation to date in Syria’s multi-sided, five-year civil war, the search is on for the two Russian pilots who ejected as the plane went down. Needless to say, just about the last place you want to be running around if you’re a fighter pilot is Syria.
But the search for the two men may be a lost cause. According to a video sent to Reuters, by “a Syrian rebel group”, at least one of the pilots is dead. Here's the official word from AFP:
The footage “appears to show a Russian pilot immobile and badly wounded on the ground,” Reuters says, adding that the rebels can be heard saying “a Russian pilot”, and “God is great” in the background. Here's the clip:
ISIS is not known to operate in the region, which is controlled by the Free Syrian Army.
Now, both Moscow and Ankara are scrambling to figure out next steps. Frants Klintsevich, deputy head of Russia's upper house security and defense committee called the act “extremely agressive,” and says "NATO countries are trying to demonize Russia and discredit its actions against international terrorism." “This is a provocation," he added, but did say that direct confrontation with Turkey would be "absurd."
For his part, State Duma Deputy Speaker Nikolai Levichev says Russia should cut off air traffic to Turkey and evacuate Russian citizens.
Meanwhile, Turkey contends that it wouldn't have mattered whose jet it was, it would have been shot down regardless for violating the country's airspace. "Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet was in line with clearly defined military rules of engagement and wasn’t an action against any specific country," an official told Bloomberg by text message.
So we suppose if that were say, a Saudi warplane, Turkey would have shot it down too.
Here's a second video released by the FSA:
That would of course be the same FSA that's backed by the US and the same FSA who is allied with al-Nusra with whom the group shares American and Saudi-supplied TOWs and other advanced weaponry(see here).
As The Telegraph notes, "Alwiya al-Ashar [that's an FSA brigade] is one of around a dozen Turkmen groups fighting alongside Syria's rebels. It is linked to a Turkish and CIA-backed logistics supply programme that funnels a near-constant stream of small arms, ammunition, and cash for salaries to rebel groups across northern Syria."
So just to be clear on what's happened here in case the gravity of the situation is somehow lost on anyone, a NATO member from whose airbase the US is flying combat missions, just shot down a Russian fighter jet and the US-backed, al-Qaeda aligned FSA has released not one, but two videos depicting their fighters dancing over the body of a dead Russian pilot while shouting "Allahu Akbar" and holding up the "we're number one" hand signal.
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