Fwd: Syria shoots down Turkey military jet, Turkey vows to take "necessary steps".

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Leader of 71 <lesjulia1@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2012 13:27:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Syria shoots down Turkey military jet, Turkey vows to take
"necessary steps".
To: opendebateforum@googlegroups.com

Turkey says it will take 'steps' after determining that Syria shot down
missing jetBy Liz
Sly<http://www.washingtonpost.com/liz-sly/2011/03/02/ABXzvmP_page.html>
, Published: June 22 | Updated: Saturday, June 23,3:30 AM

BEIRUT — Turkey vowed to take "necessary steps" after concluding that Syria
shot down a Turkish fighter jet near the Syrian border on Friday, sending
tensions soaring in the already fraught region.

In a terse statement issued after an emergency security meeting called by
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish government said that a
missing F-4 fighter jet had been brought down by Syria. The statement said
Turkey "will make its final position known once the evidence is fully
uncovered and will determinedly take necessary
steps<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-investigates-whether-syria-shot-down-missing-jet/2012/06/22/gJQAtSLdvV_print.html#>
."

On Saturday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said the investigation would
look at whether the plane was shot down in Turkish airspace, Reuters
reported, citing Turkish media.

"It is not possible to cover over a thing like this, whatever is necessary
will be done," the state-run Anatolia news agency quoted Gul as saying.

The fate of the jet's two pilots was not known, and Turkey said that Syrian
vessels had joined in a massive search operation in the eastern
Mediterranean, where the plane is thought to have gone down. The Turkish
military said earlier that it had lost contact with the warplane shortly
before noon as it flew over the southern Turkish province of Hatay.

After Turkey, a NATO member,
confirmed<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-investigates-whether-syria-shot-down-missing-jet/2012/06/22/gJQAtSLdvV_print.html#>
the
shooting, a Syrian military spokesman issued a statement acknowledging that
it had shot the plane down at 11:40 a.m., after it approached Syria at low
altitude from the sea.

"An unidentified aerial
target<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-investigates-whether-syria-shot-down-missing-jet/2012/06/22/gJQAtSLdvV_print.html#>
violated
Syrian airspace, coming from the west at a very low altitude and at high
speed over territorial waters, so the Syrian anti-air defenses counteracted
with anti-aircraft artillery," said the statement, carried by the official
Syrian Arab News Agency. The plane was less than a mile from the Syrian
coast when it was hit, and it came down about six miles away, in Syrian
territorial waters, the statement said.

The incident underscored the region's jittery mood as the revolt in Syria
degenerates into an armed conflict that many fear will spill beyond its
borders, draw in its neighbors and perhaps prompt wider international
military intervention.

Compounding the tensions, Turkey has emerged as the main conduit for the
new supplies of weaponry that are flowing to Syrian rebels with funds from
Saudi Arabia and Qatar and facilitated in part by the United States. More
than 30,000 Syrian refugees have flooded into southern Turkey over the past
year, and the leadership of the
rebelFree<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-investigates-whether-syria-shot-down-missing-jet/2012/06/22/gJQAtSLdvV_print.html#>
Syrian
Army is being housed at one of the refugee camps there.

It is not the first time Turkey has been ensnared in the violence since the
uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's rule erupted 15 months ago,
souring the once-close relationship between Damascus and Ankara. After
Syrian forces fired shots across the border into a camp for Syrian refugees
in April, Turkey threatened to invoke a mutual-defense clause in the NATO
charter.

Syria seemed eager to play down the plane incident. "There was no
aggression," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said on his Twitter
account. "It was an unidentified target flying at very low range when it
violated Syrian airspace." He also emphasized the role that Syrian vessels
were playing in helping search for the missing pilots.

The shooting nonetheless comes at a moment of heightened concern about the
spiraling violence in Syria in the wake of the collapse of a U.N. peace
plan brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan. The U.N. monitors who were
dispatched to Syria to observe a now-nonexistent cease-fire have been
confined to their
hotels<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-investigates-whether-syria-shot-down-missing-jet/2012/06/22/gJQAtSLdvV_print.html#>
because
it is too dangerous for them to go out, and the Security Council remains
divided over what alternatives to pursue.

At a news conference in Geneva, Annan warned that unless the international
community agrees on a way forward soon, "it will be too late to stop the
crisis from spiraling out of control."

Among the dozens of deaths reported in Syria on Friday were 25 men who had
apparently been executed by rebel forces in a mass killing in the province
of Aleppo, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights.A video posted on YouTube showed an array of blood-soaked bodies
strewn beside a bullet-ridden pick-up on a deserted, unpaved rural road.
Some were wearing military fatigues, others jeans and T-shirts. A voice
identifies the dead men as "Assad's shabiha," a reference to pro-government
militias that the opposition blames for much of the violence taking place.

Syria's state news agency SANA also reported the killings, saying that
"armed terrorists" had committed a "brutal massacre" in the Daret Azzeh
area of Aleppo, one of several areas in the province that are slipping out
of government control.

**

Special correspondent Suzan Haidamous contributed to this report.

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