Turkey and Syria said their Navies were jointly searching on Saturday for Turkish airmen shot down by Syria over the Mediterranean, while nearby Turkish authorities were hosting thousands of rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad.
Signals from both sides suggested neither wanted a military confrontation over Friday’s shooting down of the jet near sea borders of both states. However, the joint operation will clearly sit uneasily with both forces, given the bitter hostility between the two former allies over Assad’s 16-month crackdown on opponents.
Turkey has promised to respond decisively.
“It is not possible to cover over a thing like this. Whatever is necessary will no doubt be done,” Turkish President Abdullah Gul told reporters, adding that Ankara had been in telephone contact with Syrian authorities.
The incident, whatever its causes, demonstrated Syria’s formidable Russian-supplied air defences — one of the many reasons for Western qualms about any military intervention to halt bloodshed in the country.
Turkey’s deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc said the downed jet was not a warplane but a reconnaissance aircraft, state television TRT reported. Turkish media had earlier identified it as an F-4 Phantom, a fighter also used for reconnaissance. Mr Gul said it was routine for fast-flying jets to cross borders for a short distance and that an investigation would determine if the aircraft was brought down in Turkish airspace.
Syria’s military said the Turkish plane was flying low, just one kilometre off the Syrian coast, when it was shot down. Ithad been tracked at first as an unidentified aircraft and its Turkish origine established subsequently.
“The navies of the two countries have established contact. Syrian naval vessels are participating along with the Turkish side in the search operation for the missing pilots,” it said.
With the second biggest army in Nato, a force hardened by nearly 30 years of fighting Kurdish rebels, Turkey would be a formidable foe for a Syrian military already struggling to put down a popular uprising and an increasingly potent insurgency.