 "Russian Su-24 fighter jet shot over Syria by Turkey: reports")
Turkish fighter jets on patrol near the Syrian border shot down a Russian warplane on Tuesday after it violated Turkey's airspace, a long-feared escalation that could further strain relations between Russia and the West.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that one of its jets, a Sukhoi SU-24, had crashed in Syria but said it had been downed "presumably as a result of shelling from the ground."
The Russian Defense Ministry also asserted that, "The plane stayed exclusively above the territory of Syria throughout the entire flight," and said that the two pilots had ejected.
The Turkish military did not identify the nationality of the plane but said in a statement on its website that its pilots fired only after repeated warnings to the other warplane.
"The aircraft entered Turkish airspace over the town of Yaylidag, in the southeastern Hatay province," the statement read. "The plane was warned 10 times in the space of five minutes before it was taken down."
The incident comes just a day before Russia's foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, is scheduled to travel to Turkey for what now promises to be tense discussions.
The countries' relations have been strained by the Kremlin's intervention in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad and against the rebels backed by Ankara.
Russia's presidential spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said in Moscow on Tuesday that it was impossible to say how this would affect relations between the countries until the circumstances were more fully understood.
Russia's entry into the heavily trafficked skies around Syria raised immediate concerns about mishaps, inadvertent or otherwise, that could lead to confrontations involving Turkey, a NATO member, and the United States.
Turkey has warned Moscow about intrusions in its airspace at least two times since it began its bombing campaign in September and last week shot down an unmanned aerial device that analysts said was likely of Russian origin.
The Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, ordered the Foreign Ministry to consult with NATO and the United Nations over this episode, his office said in a statement, without elaborating.
Television footage shown on the privately owned Turkish channel Haberturk showed a warplane exploding in the air and tumbling down in flames in a wooded area, identified by the broadcaster as a region of northern Syria known to Turks as the Turkmen Mountains.
Another video published by the semiofficial news service Anadolu Agency showed two figures parachuting from the aircraft.
RUSSIA-TURKEY TRADE RELATIONS
TOURISM
- Turkey's seaside resorts are among the most popular tourism destinations for Russians; for Turkey, Russia is the source of the second-largest number of tourists
- In 2014, 4% of Turkey's exports, mainly textiles and food, worth $6 billion went to Russia
- Turkish exports to Russia have fallen 40 per cent over January-September to $2.7 billion
- Turkey is the second-largest buyer of Russian natural gas, after Germany. Russia is Turkey's largest natural gas supplier, with Ankara buying 28-30 bcm of the 50 bcm of natural gas needed annually from Russia
- Russia also supplies oil and oil products to Turkey
- Turkey commissioned Russia's state-owned Rosatom in 2013 to build four 1,200-Mw reactors in a project worth $20 billion
- Russia and Turkey also have the TurkStream pipeline project, an alternative to Russia's South Stream pipeline, to transport gas to Europe without crossing Ukraine
- Russia's Gazprom has recently almost halved the planned capacity of its TurkStream gas pipeline project to 32 bcm per year
©2015 The New York Times News Service
