(Newswire.net — November 25, 2015) — The affair of the Russian jet downed by Turkey continues. Being described by the Russian president Putin as “a stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorism” and “the right of Turkey to defend its borders” by the Turkish president Erdogan, still does not give even the slightest hint how/if this incident will be resolved. Presumably it will be solved but with great efforts from the whole world.
For the starters, it seems that Russian citizens will forget about going to Turkey for their holidays, since they were strongly advised agasinst it. Two defence ministries are not on speaking terms and it is unclear when the diplomacy will start reparing the damage on some higher levels.
On the one hand, Turkish president insists that this was just the last in series of invasions of Turkish territory in recent weeks and that everything possible was done for this incident to be prevented. It is obvious that this is more than usual sabre-rattling and although Turkey is generally supported by its allies, they also call for de-escalation of this confrontation. Further deepening of the crisis brought the claim of Turkish militia men that they shot at the Russian pilots who were going down with their parachutes and made the rescue helicopter perform an emergency landing after it had been hit. One of the marines from the helicopter is reported dead, which also seasoned the conflict.
On the other hand, Russian defence minister Lavrov said that Russia considered “actions of the Turkish air-force as an unfriendly act”, but it seems that what disturbed president Putin the most was the fact that Turkey had notified its allies of the incident before they informed Russia. If Turkey becomes an unfriendly country to Russia, it will suffer great losses when it comes to tourism or, more importantly, a new gas pipeline project and it is possible that in the future Russian planes will be equippped to fight back.
It still remains to be seen and verified whether the Russian jet was indeed inside Turkish territory for 17 seconds and whether it was previously warned ten times to leave their air space. It is difficult to choose sides just following claims from both sides and without any concrete evidence. The most important thing is that the conflict is resolved peacefully as many people hope it will be.