Why Did Turkey Shoot Down a Russian Jet Near the Syria Border?

[rootone]

Not that it's relevant, but I'd like to see some details/citation of that second claim -- and not from a Russian source. At face value that sounds like it should be a pretty big deal, which makes it highly unlikely to be true as stated. I'm guessing there is an occupied or disputed territory involved...

Here is an official list of incidents on file, and this is just recently, just for the past month.
Directly from the Greek military, not some RT or whatever site.
http://www.geetha.mil.gr/en/violati...ments-of-air-traffic-regulations-icao-en.html

 

[Ilja]

Fair enough - I'm willing to let your Greece claims drop, but do not bring it up again without additional information and proper sources.

It's not that I'm unable to find NATO propaganda sources (once you prefer them) for Turkish violations of Greek airspace.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmc...rspace-over-2000-times-last-year-infographic/

So again: there is no reason why Turkey would shoot down a plane that did not violate their airspace when they have had options to shoot ones down that did.

Simple revenge. You have shot my oil trucks (ok, officially IS oil trucks, but they sell it very cheap, so 50% of the profit is mine) and my soldiers (ok, officially "moderate opposition", but I pay them, give them weapons, many of them are Turks) with your jets, so I will shoot your jets.

After this, nobody will question our claim that it has violated Turkish airspace, our shot will be fully supported by NATO, and after a nice precedent you will never fly again near the border, because we will shot your plains whenever they appear there, and you will not shoot back because US is behind us.

But anyway, when your own rebuttal states that there was an incursion there is no way to twist that into there being no incursion. Claiming that the time was 7s instead of 17, even if true, does not make 7=0.

You don't understand the logic of a rebuttal? Assume that your claims are true. Then we derive a contradiction, in this case even several: 1.) Jet flying at stall speed, 2.) Jet was warned at a time when it was not even flying in direction of the border. It follows, the claims are not true. The aim of such a rebuttal is not that much to find out which part of the claim is wrong, it is sufficient to show that some part of it is wrong. What follows is that Turkey is lying.

The rebuttal becomes, of course, even stronger, if one can show that the claims contain even two lies. The plane flying at stall speed being one, the problem is if the claim about the warnings during 5 min is wrong independently. To show such an independence, one has to make sure that the falsification does not depend on the first wrong claim. It appears that map is sufficient, to have it 5 min before already in the direction toward the border would require an even lower speed. So, correcting the false stall speed with a reasonable assumption about the speed does not save the Turkish claim. Thus, Turkey is caught with two lies.

 

[OmCheeto]

Who was it that said; "The first casualty of war, is the truth." ?^[1]

Physicists Show Both Russia And Turkey Were Lying About The Downed Russian Plane [IFLScience]
Dec 1, 2015

Source of IFLS's story [kuleuvenblogt.be]
According to our calculations, it is clear that both the story of Turkey and Russia should be taken with a grain of salt. Estimates limit the violation of Turkish airspace to a maximum of 10s. Russia's claim that the jets prevented Turkey does not correspond to the laws of mechanics.
...
[translation by, um, a button on my browser]

[1] From my searches, this appears to be an ancient truth, passed down from antiquity, and attributed to many.

 

[mheslep]

While the findings reported by KU LEUVEN blog may or may not be correct, and I think not, the phrase is "The first casualty of war, is the truth", period. The phrase is not appended with "...except from physicists as reported on the internet."

We all have our self interests. Some of those interests may be, for those not directly involved, as I observe: i) the pull of the idea that there is no right or wrong party and so a passive stance is never challenged; ii) the desire to feel important, authoritative.

 

[nikkkom]

I think 'foolhardy' is the best description yet.
I have no idea why this happened but it helps nobody, especially Turkey.
They can forget about their ambitions to become an EU member for the next decade at least.

Turkey just got a visa-free travel agreement with EU approved.

 

[nikkkom]

All I know is that Russia now has fighter escorts, anti-aircraft missile systems and ships off the coast that they didn't have before in response this stupid attack so yes, they've taken advantage of it.

What is advantageous about that for Russia? The deeper it goes into Syria, the more likely it to have its Afghanistan#2. Afghanistan#1 ended with dissolution of USSR.

 

[nikkkom]

Simple revenge. You have shot my oil trucks (ok, officially IS oil trucks, but they sell it very cheap, so 50% of the profit is mine) and my soldiers (ok, officially "moderate opposition", but I pay them, give them weapons, many of them are Turks) with your jets, so I will shoot your jets.

Our Russian friend is incredibly butthurt when somebody does to Russia what Russia did to Ukraine one year ago. LOL.

 

[Nehmo]

• • 
    
    Erdogan, president of Turkey, opposes the Kurds and also opposes Syrian president Assad. He doesn’t like Greece or Russia or Iran, basically all the surrounding countries. He is friendly with the US, NATO, Iraq’s current government, some militant groups in Syria and Iraq, like the Turkmen and the moderate Muslim rebels who oppose Assad
    
  • An intercepted phone call, denied by Erdogan, reveals Erdogan instructing his 33-year-old son, Bilal, to dispose of large amounts money from their private home on the day police were raiding politicians’ homes conducting a corruption investigation.
  • Erdogan’s administration of Turkey makes thousands of flight incursions into Greece, but Greece doesn’t attack any of the planes.
  • After Syria downed a Turkish plane in 2012,, Erdogan said, "A short term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack". And, referring to the same incident, Erdogan also said, "Even if the plane [the Turkish one] was in their [Syrian] airspace for a few seconds, that is no excuse to attack."
  • Russia is not at war with Turkey. However, Erdogan buys oil from ISIS, and Russia is bombing ISIS.
  • A day after Erdogan shot the Russian plane, he assassinated human rights lawyer Tahir Elci. Immediately after the assassination, the Erdogan government outlandishly claimed the lawyer’s own people killed him. Tahir Elci was a prominent critic of the Erdogan government.
  • According to a Turkish Radar picture shown on BBC, the plane went over a part of Turkey protruding into Syria, which is about 3km wide where the jet went over. Assuming the Turkish version is correct, it means the Su24, at a slow speed, was over Turkish space for 17 seconds.
  • The Russians provided the US the flight path of the plane before it took off. Presumably, the US in tern gave this to other members of the collision, including Turkey. This is why Putin describes the event as a “stab in the back”. The Turkish F16s had to have been already in the air. The Turks claim they gave 10 warnings to the russian jet, but they weren’t heeded. The US has not provided its recordings of the air traffic. Turkey provided a sound clip of one side. Russia says this is fake.
  • Russian radar shows the plane was always in Syria.
  • Erdogan claims Syrian ground in the area has Turkmen rebels and civilians. However, the video of the Su24’s crash shows a Turkish citizen, a mayor’s son (the guy with the long nose), commanding a group of undisciplined fighters who shoot at the parachutes.
    

 

[nsaspook]

What is advantageous about that for Russia? The deeper it goes into Syria, the more likely it to have its Afghanistan#2. Afghanistan#1 ended with dissolution of USSR.

The Russians keep their Syrian bases with an improved military posture to maintain a defacto no-fly zone in their area of operations.

Another Afghanistan? Possible but unlikely for several reasons. #1 The lack of massive (mainly) US support of proxy fighters in a direct confrontation with Soviet ground forces like we did starting in early 1979 Afghanistan that lead to a demoralizing decade long ground war causing the destruction of nearly the entire Afghanistan infrastructure. This left the USSR holding on to rubble and trading rocks for dead soldiers while the Soviet state imploded economically. #2 The Syria leaderships close cooperation with Russia for generations provides a stable base of operations for Pro-Assad Syrian fighters to operate and regain control of lost territory. #3 The Assad dictatorship is not a puppet government quickly thrown together with little internal support. We don't like the current leadership in Syria for very good reasons but it is internationally considered as the legal government of the Syria people that now looks moderate when compared to the alternatives.

 

[mheslep]

Erdogan’s administration of Turkey makes thousands of flight incursions into Greece, but Greece doesn’t attack any of the planes.

These incursions into Greek airspace is quite a different matter from was Russia was doing the last couple months, flying over land, the Turkish mainland. This Turkish-Greek airspace dispute involves the Turks flying into the 10 nmi airspace Greece claims around all of its territory, when the Turks say they'll only respect 6 nmi. Given the Greek islands in the Aegean the total territory considerable, making an air approach to Turkey from the Aegean difficult. 10 nmi airspace from wiki:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Aegean_10_nm.svg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Aegean_10_nm.svg

If the Turks had been flying over the Greek mainland instead of, say, 8 nmi off the island of Lesbos the Greeks might have had quite a different response.

Russian radar shows the plane was always in Syria.

We don't know that. We know that Putin et al says Russian radar shows ...

 

[Nehmo]

I'm just learning about the subject, but it seems at least a few of the Turkish flights have been over mainland Greece,. But in the situation of the Turkish shoot down of the Russian plane (the issue is not one jet or one pilot or a possible 17 second intrusion), the question is more of Which side is Turkey on? Turkey publicly claims to be against ISIS. It's part of the coalition. But if it is, then why would it attack a plane fighting ISIS?
The natural suspicion is that Turkey really isn't against ISIS.

Edit by mentor, removed inappropriate source

 

[nikkkom]

the question is more of Which side is Turkey on? Turkey publicly claims to be against ISIS. It's part of the coalition. But if it is, then why would it attack a plane fighting ISIS?

This plane wasn't attacking ISIS. ISIS isn't present in the area.

 

[rootone]

This plane wasn't attacking ISIS. ISIS isn't present in the area.

The Russians have stated plainly enough that their interest is to support the Assad regime against ALL rebel groups, and not IS in particular.
I guess they would be therefore be targeting any location where there is a rebel group assessed to be posing some kind of immanent threat.
Well I do have to say that this is at least a clear policy, unlike some other involved countries who seem a bit unsure about which rebels are good rebels and which are bad rebels.

 

[nikkkom]

The Russians have stated plainly enough that their interest is to support the Assad regime against ALL rebel groups, and not IS in particular.

I was responding to Hehmo's question "why would Turkey attack a plane fighting ISIS?". The question is invalid: turkey did not attack a plane which was fighting ISIS.

 

[rootone]

This plane wasn't attacking ISIS. ISIS isn't present in the area.

Sure I don't disagree, the plane which downed was not involved in attacking ISIS.
It mission would have been an attack on some other outfit which was considered problematic for some reason.
As I said the Russians have made it plain that their presence is in support of Assad, who requested their support.
They don't particularly care whether ISIS positions are today's target, or some other grouping.