Turkey downplays ‘ill intentions,’ says downed jet may have violated Syrian airspace

Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul said Saturday the jet fighter shot down by Syria might have violated Syrian airspace.

“It is routine for jet fighters to sometimes fly in and out over (national) borders ... when you consider their speed over the sea,” Gul told Anatolia news agency. “These are not ill-intentioned things but happen beyond control due to the jets’ speed.”

He said Anakara has made a telephone contact with Syria.

The president, however, heightened his tone when he said that it is not “possible to ignore Turkish fighter jet being downed by Syria,” and that whatever is needed to be done following downing of the fighter jet will be done.

Meanwhile, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said on Saturday a jet that was shot down by Syria was not a warplane but a reconnaissance aircraft, state television TRT reported.

It was not immediately clear where Arinc, who is one of four deputy prime ministers and also the government's spokesman, was speaking. Turkish media reported the downed jet was an F-4 Phantom, a supersonic jet fighter which can also carry out reconnaissance operations.

Syria’s downing of a Turkish plane marks a serious escalation of the Syrian conflict, Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Saturday.

“The shooting down yesterday of a Turkish aircraft over Syrian territorial waters - this is a serious escalation and indication that the conflict would have far (a) bigger impact than (on) Syria itself,” he told a televised news conference with his Swedish, Bulgarian and Polish counterparts in Baghdad.

On Saturday, Syria confirmed that it shot down a Turkish warplane over its territory, sparking a fresh crisis on the two countries’ long border which is already awash with refugees and rebel fighters.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said NATO member Turkey would take all necessary steps once it had established the facts of Syria's downing of the F-4 fighter jet in Mediterranean waters on Friday.

Tensions between the two neighbors were already running high as Ankara has taken a tough line on Damascus’s bloody crackdown on a 15-month-old uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, giving sanctuary to defecting military personnel who have formed the kernel of an expanding rebel army.

Syria’s official SANA news agency confirmed that Damascus had downed the jet in a terse report early on Saturday.

“An unidentified aerial target violated Syrian air space, coming from the west at a very low altitude and at high speed over territorial waters,” the news agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.

Turkey has denied that it is arming Syrian opposition, however the New York Times reported on Thursday that a small number of CIA officers had been deployed to southern Turkey, where they were helping U.S. allies decide which Syrian opposition elements should receive weapons deliveries.

While Turkey’s offcials downplayed the Seriousness of Syria downing a Turkish plane, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Saturday it marks a serious escalation of the Syrian conflict,

“The shooting down yesterday of a Turkish aircraft over Syrian territorial waters - this is a serious escalation and indication that the conflict would have far (a) bigger impact than (on) Syria itself,” he told a televised news conference with his Swedish, Bulgarian and Polish counterparts in Baghdad.