BY TULAY KARADENIZ AND MARIA KISELYOVA
Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the
Syrian border on Tuesday, saying it had repeatedly violated its air space, one
of the most serious publicly acknowledged clashes between a NATO member country
and Russia for half a century.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the plane
had been attacked when it was 1 km (0.62 mile) inside Syria and warned of
"serious consequences" for what he termed a "stab in the
back".
"We will never tolerate such crimes like
the one committed today," Putin said, as Russian and Turkish shares fell
on fears of an escalation between the former Cold War enemies.
Each country summoned a diplomatic
representative of the other and NATO called a meeting of its ambassadors for
Tuesday afternoon. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov canceled a visit to
Turkey that had been due on Wednesday.
Footage from private Turkish broadcaster
Haberturk TV showed the 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", it said.
Separate footage from Turkey's Anadolu Agency
showed two pilots parachuting out of the jet before it crashed. A deputy
commander of rebel Turkmen forces in Syria said his men shot both pilots dead
as they came down.
A video sent to Reuters earlier appeared to show
one of the pilots immobile and badly wounded on the ground and an official from
the group said he was dead.
Russia's defense ministry said one of its Su-24
fighter jets had been downed in Syria and that, according to preliminary
information, the pilots were able to eject.
"For the entire duration of the flight, the
aircraft was exclusively over Syrian territory,” it said.
The Turkish military said the aircraft had been
warned 10 times in the space of five minutes about violating Turkish air space.
Officials said a second plane had also approached the border and been warned.
"The data we have is very clear. There were
two planes approaching our border, we warned them as they were getting too
close," a senior Turkish official told Reuters.
"We warned them to avoid entering Turkish
air space before they did, and we warned them many times. Our findings show
clearly that Turkish air space was violated multiple times. And they violated
it knowingly," the official said.
A second official said the incident was not an action against any specific country but a move to defend Turkey's sovereign territory within its rules of engagement.
SECOND PILOT
Russia's decision to launch separate air strikes
in Syria mean Russian and NATO planes have been flying combat missions in the
same air space for the first time since World War Two, targeting various
insurgent groups close to Turkish borders.
A U.S. official said U.S. forces were not
involved in the downing of the Russian jet, which was the first time a Russian
or Soviet military aircraft has been publicly acknowledged to have been shot
down by a NATO member since the 1950s.
The incident appeared to scupper hopes of a
rapprochement between Russia and the West in the wake of the Islamic State
attacks in Paris, which led to calls for a united front against the radical
jihadist group in Syria.
Russia's main stock index fell more than two
percent, while Turkish stocks fell 1.3 percent. Both the rouble and lira were
weaker.
Lavrov advised Russians not to visit Turkey and
one of Russia's largest tour operators to the country said it would temporarily
suspend sales of trips.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was briefed by
the head of the military, while Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was due to
report on the incident to NATO ambassadors at 1600 GMT (11:00 a.m. ET). He also
informed the United Nations and related countries.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring
group said the warplane crashed in a mountainous area in the northern
countryside of Latakia province, where there had been aerial bombardment
earlier and where pro-government forces have been battling insurgents on the
ground.
"A Russian pilot," a voice is heard
saying in the video sent to Reuters as men gather around the man on the ground.
"God is great," is also heard.
The rebel group that sent the video operates in
the northwestern area of Syria, where groups including the Free Syrian Army are
active but Islamic State, which has beheaded captives in the past, has no known
presence.
The official from the group, who declined to be
named for security reasons, did not mention the second Russian pilot.
A deputy commander of a Turkmen brigade told reporters near where the plane came down that his forces had shot dead the two pilots as they descended.
"Both of the pilots were retrieved dead.
Our comrades opened fire into the air and they died in the air," Alpaslan
Celiksaid near the Syrian village of Yamadi as he held what he said was a piece
of a pilot's parachute.
Russian military helicopters were searching for
the pilots, Turkey's Dogan news agency said.
In a further sign of a growing fallout over
Syria, Syrian rebel fighters who have received U.S. arms said they fired at a
Russian helicopter, forcing it to land in territory held by Moscow's Syrian
government allies.
Both Russia and its ally, Syria's government,
have carried out strikes in the area where the plane came down. A Syrian
military source said the reported downing was being investigated.
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 against the bombing of
their villages.
Ankara has traditionally expressed solidarity
with Syrian Turkmens, who are Syrians of Turkish descent.
About 1,700 people have fled the mountainous
Syrian area near to the Turkish border as a result of fighting in the last
three days, a Turkish official said on Monday. Russian jets have bombed the
area in support of ground operations by Syrian government forces.
Some Western analysts characterized the downing
of the jet as a robust response by Turkey which they said created clear red
lines for Russia and should thereby make further clashes less, rather than more
likely.
"Reducing the margin for error in this way
lowers, rather than raises, the potential for more serious clashes,” said Keir
Giles, associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House in
London.
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