“The Turkish and Russian ties have reached a critical era now”, he noted, while downplaying the war scenarios over the incident.
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There’s a search on for two pilots and for what really happened when a fighter-jet went down near Turkey’s border with Syria today.
Video footage of the incident showed a warplane on fire before crashing on a hill and two crew members apparently parachuting safely.
“Presumably as a result of firing, an Su-24 plane of the Russian forces crashed in the Syrian Arab Republic”, the defence ministry said in a statement.
He said the plane had been attacked “at a height of 6,000 metres (20,000ft), 1km from the border”.
“The data we have is very clear”.
An unnamed official tells BuzzFeed Turkey gave the pilots plenty of warning long before the warplane crossed the border.
“It’s as if we shot down the Turkish plane and not they ours”. Ankara claimed it had violated Turkish airspace 10 times within a five-minute period.
Still, Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Tuesday that his country had a “duty” to defend its territory.
But state-run media in Syria called the shoot-down an act of “blatant aggression” and said the downed plane was over northern Syria at the time.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has bitterly condemned the downing of a Russian jet on the Turkey-Syria border.
Russian Federation began an air campaign in Syria on September 30, saying it was targeting the Islamic State jihadist group and other “terrorists”.
Russia’s main stock index fell more than two percent, while Turkish stocks fell 1.3 percent.
Also Tuesday, the Turkish government named a cabinet following the recent snap election that fortified President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Most Turkmens live in the Turkmen Mountain in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia, near the border with Turkey.
“A Russian pilot”, a voice is heard saying in the video sent to Reuters as men gather around the man on the ground.
A voice then adds: “God is great”. The Free Syrian Army’s usage of these anti-tank missiles has shot up by 800% since Russian Federation launched airstrikes in Syria.
Both pilots ejected from the plane, but their fate is unknown, Sputnik reported.
Syrian troops have been on the offensive in the area that is controlled by several insurgent groups including al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, and the 2nd Coastal Division and the 10th Coast Division that includes local Turkmen fighters. A Syrian military source said the reported downing was being investigated.
“We will certainly carefully analyse what has happened and today’s tragic event will have serious consequences to Russian-Turkish relations”, he said.
Syrian Turkmen are Syrian citizens of Turkish ethnicity who have lived in Syria since Ottoman times and have coexisted with Syrian Arabs for hundreds of years. He complained that Turkey first disclosed the incident to its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies and not Russian Federation. Erdogan is meanwhile expected to visit Russian Federation for talks with Putin in late December. The money finances terrorist groups, he said. Russian jets have bombed the area in support of ground operations by Syrian government forces.
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The ministry said the pilots have parachuted but added that Moscow had no further contact with them.
