This is a good article. Turkey does have a different agenda, and they need to be called out on it before we really get hurt.

Agreed. I think the Turks have been extremely shrewd about the unfolding civil war in Syria and have been taking full advantage of the situation and I think Erdogan is a tyrant. While for obvious reasons I hope the Russians don't retaliate and escalate the situation, they have every right to do so and although there is a kind of a morbid irony about Russia being on the receiving end of a plane being unexpectedly shot down over civil war territory, I don't think the Turkish had any right to jump up to such extremes.

War isn't clean and its not only people on the ground that get killed. Russia clearly invaded Turkish air space, was intercepted, warned and shot down.

I don't understand the surprise. A Russian jet that regularly bombs surrounding areas was shot down for infringing EU air space. The EU will not be dis embowling Turkey for this.

Turkey isn't in the EU but I agree with your general point that western alliances won't be cracking down on Turkey for this; which is a pity because I think Turkey have been unscrupulously horrific throughout this unfolding crisis.

reading reports, its far from clear that Russia did invade Turkish airspace, and if they did, it was for less than 1 or 2 seconds, so the Turks have been trigger happy. They also know what's going on there, and know that the NATO allies are supportive of Russia at the moment, so it was unnecessary and extreme to shoot the plane down.

well it wasn't clearly.. it was right on the border and they were in there for a matter of seconds but still were shot down without posing any threat whats so ever, Nato have been violating other countrys airspace for years with clear threats and making there own rules as they go along but of course god forbid anyone who say otherwise, can't have 1 rule for one Country and another for Nato Countrys, thats not how the World should work.

Sorry, I meant NATO.

I have this sick feeling in my stomach that what we have just witnessed the opening shots of WW3.

Turkey is both a Muslim nation and also a member of NATO, under the terms of that treaty Britain is obliged to defend Turkey should Russia attack.
A messy situation has just got a whole lot messier.

Just like to point out this year Turkey violated Greek airspace with six fighter jets who were actually in formation and you can say that could be seen as a clear threat and warranted action a whole lot more then today did but they were chased off and the problem avoided and these incidents have happened thousands of times in the past 2 years, just like Zee said there really was no logical reason to attack that Russian Jet and it could have easily been avoided.

Sadly I feel the same.

I have to make an inappropriate joke though:


http://i63.tinypic.com/ajl7yd.jpg

I know it's about Ukraine, but still........

:clap1:

WW3 is imminent

And this isn't the first time Russia have violated Turkish air space either. http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...olations-syria
What we must keep in mind is, The Russians have been bombing the Turkmans who's rebel armies sit on the borders between Turkey and Syria. The Turkmans want to overthrow Assad and ISIS. The Turks support the Turkmans and so they will have zero tolerance with the Russians.

I know the Russians claim they were bombing ISIS but the Turkmans claim there is no ISIS groups within the area that's being targeted.

World War III started the day four flights were hijacked and deliberately flown into American territory. Or maybe World War III started as soon as World War II ended when we started drawing lines in the desert and carving up swathes of land and calling them British or French and paying absolutely no attention to the people who actually lived there and just expected them to get on with each other... Just because we're not cowering in Anderson shelters doesn't mean we're not at war. This is a new type of warfare and our governments don't know how to fight it because they can't drop bombs on an ideology. It's not even new territory, we were at it for years in the Cold War, but we already came up with the idea of a nuclear deterrent and the only time we ever encountered suicide bombers, we dropped two disgustingly big nuclear bombs on them to put an end to that and I think we can all agree that we should never do that again...

ISIS is not going away. We should withdraw and let them build the religious death cult nation they want to build, and then **** with their economy like we do with every other country in the world who won't play by our rules. Bombing the desert and indiscriminately killing their civilians is just going to create more terrorists who will indiscriminately kill our civilians in return. If we can continue to let a monstrosity like North Korea exist then we can let ISIS relive the dark ages until that collapses and something else pops up in its place, something that doesn't want to punctuate cups of coffee with bullets and add pyrotechnics to concerts. It's so ****ing simple I just can't fathom these sheep who shriek BOMB THEM or NOT ALL MUSLIMS SUPPORT ISIS!! They're a group of politically repressed and/or socially neglected who are disillusioned with the world we make them live in. We need to stop.

Instead, we have ****ery like this where the Turkish shoot down a Russian plane because both want to keep taking advantage of the mayhem, just on opposite sides. I don't think Putin was wrong in calling the Turkish accomplices of terrorists. They are. So are the Saudis. The Russians and the Iranians are accomplices of a murderous dictator. They're as bad as each other and so are we - we keep throwing money at the Saudis and let that nepotistic fiefdom continue to exist despite their objectively awful attitude to human rights.

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!

the fact that Airspace around the is violated all the time, you know those frequent reports about Russia violating Swedish airspace? well Nato violated it a lot more times then Russia since 2010, as for violations in Turkey airspace Isreal have done it in the past, the point is this is a frequent thing but why was today the right time to shoot down a single plane? how can it be justified?

Because Turkey gives no ****s and knows perfectly well that the EU and NATO needs it as much as it needs them and finally had the perfect opportunity to exploit that loophole. Shoot down a Russian aircraft: no one will lift a finger to lay any blame at their doorstep because Turkey is a NATO ally and Russia wants to preserve the """""AXIS OF EVIL"""""........................................ the whole rhetoric is just stupid. Russia bombs ethnic Turkic people because they don't want Turkey to gobble up Assad's remaining terrain when Team America: World Police finally depose him. Turkey quietly supports ISIS and massacres its own Kurdish citizens to stop them from creating their own state in the chaos and gaining revenge somewhere down the line for the decades of oppression Turkey has imposed on them.

May god bless Russia In these times. Keep us safe, Putin.

I don't disagree with anything you've said Z but up until now, war has been in someone else's back garden not ours. In fact a huge percentage of Brits still live in happy oblivion of what's unfolding out there in the dessert and even if they are aware, they have no idea of the global impact it could have.

This whole thing is so fcuekd up and there's absolutely nothing we (the British people) can do about it because our government will make that choice for us.

Hug it out

Yup. The average person in this country is too self centred and individualist to ever consider that the reason we're attacked is because our leaders have continued to devastate the Middle East and Africa for financial and political gain for centuries. We're stunned when we bomb a region for a decade and retribution turns up on our doorstep with a suicide belt and a Kalashnikov.

I've actually written an article that my friend's trying to get published for me (still editing it down from one of my usual overly long rambles into something short enough to be published somewhere as an opinion piece... haha) about all of this... I hope to get it published soon and share; if not I'll continue to paraphrase from it haha.

Would we all have to go and fight or just the army?

Israel had an agreement to use Turkish airspace up until 2009. I don't recall any examples of Israeli planes violating Turkish airspace since then. The agreement ceased following Turkey's stance on Gaza and is unlikely to be reinstated following Turkish involvement in exposing Israeli special agents in Iran a couple of years ago.

Looking forward to that Z, I agree too.

Russian jets did this before around a month ago and Turkey warned that if it happened again they would shoot them down.Also if the jets were only there for a couple of seconds then how were they warned 10 times in 5 minutes?Which is apparently what happened.

Very interesting take on what happened...

http://www.politico.eu/article/erdog...ts-down-putin/

I hope Putin knows that they won't have had NATO or UN backing........ Please say they didn't.

I highly doubt it - but Turkey is pushing the exact same button Russia pushed when it annexed the Crimea.

On the news the distances discussed sound odd, they were half a mile away from where they should be. half a mile?!

Putin already lied once and said the jets were shot down from the ground in Syria.He's changed his tune now there's evidence that is not the case.

They didn't. But NATO says they "stand by" their Turkish ally.

The Turks own flight data shows that the Russian plane could only possibly have been over the border for the merest second, and only because of the unusual shape of the border at that specific point if it did cross at all.

This was a Turkish ploy in support of IS.

Not sure I see Turkey as an ally against IS to be honest.
This I think will not go down as a good moment in Turkish history.

I agree with both points.

I agree. There have been a number of situations where the Turkish have been less than honest with respect to their support/involvement with IS

It doesn't look like this will spark any great crisis thankfully. The response from Nato and the US so far has been very measured and there even seems a fair amount of sympathy for Russia in the news coverage. It could well be Turkey who come out of this with their standing reduced. It wasn't long ago that they were hailed as the future of the Middle East, providing an example as a moderate democracy which a lot of European countries even wanted to join the EU. Now they're starting to look like a bit of a liability, an authoritarian regime whose foreign policy is a mess and who is too unpredictable to be trusted. Of course that is also the view of Russia in much of the West but it is now appreciated that their involvement is going to be very important in the battle against ISIS whether Turkey likes that or not.

http://media.skynews.com/media/image...-1-563x750.jpg

http://media.skynews.com/media/image...-1-442x589.jpg

http://media.skynews.com/media/image...-1-442x589.jpg

http://media.skynews.com/media/image...-1-442x589.jpg

you've obviously never been to Russia.

it's like how the North Koreans always use the tallest men during their propaganda even though statistically the north korean men are significantly shorter than their south korean counterparts.

There was no ISIS in that area of Syria, Russia has been attacking anti-Assad forces, not ISIS. It's already been proven that most of the Russian bombings and attacks have been not on ISIS but on Anti-Assad freedom fighters. Russia doesn't care about ISIS, they know the west will take care of ISIS, instead they are using fighting terrorism as an excuse to help their dictator buddy Assad from his own people wanting democracy.

good point, and also, why would the russians even get CLOSE to Turkish airspace after that warning?

I've seen the satellite positioning tracking of the russian plane, and it clearly flew into Turkish Airspace.

also let;'s keep in mind that there is NO ISIS in that area of Syria, it was only anti-assad forces. so Russia cannot claim to have been fighting ISIS down there.

The fact that Russians were taken down so easily tells you what kind of sophistication the Russian technology is at this point. TURKEY was able to down Russian aircraft.. TURKEY.

also, not to make light of the situation, but all this talk of Turkey is getting me really hyped up for Thanksgiving on Thursday. :)