Turkey, NATO plan talks over Syrian downing of jet

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (left) talks to an adviser after an interview with the state-run TRT Television in Ankara, Turkey, on Sunday in this image made available by the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (left) talks to an adviser after an interview with the state-run TRT Television in Ankara, Turkey, on Sunday in this image made available by the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

— Turkey’s foreign minister said Sunday that his country would hold emergency talks with NATO in the next few days over the downing of one of its jet fighters by Syria, claiming the plane was attacked in international airspace.

Meanwhile in Syria, at least 38 people were reported killed in new clashes between rebels and government troops around the country Sunday.

“Next week, Permanent Council of NATO will be informed” of the plane’s downing, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a Twitter message posted from his official account Sunday. In another posting Sunday, he said that Turkey would invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which provides for consultations by the allies when a NATO member is attacked or threatened.

He did not cite the much stronger Article 5, in which an attack on one member is considered an attack on all NATO countries and obliges a concerted response.

Davutoglu posted the messages after he told state owned TRT TV that the Turkish authorities’ analysis of radar, visual and communications data had confirmed that their aircraft was struck by Syrian anti-aircraft weapons outside of Syrian airspace. “Our plane was hit in international airspace, 13 nautical miles out of Syria, when Syrian territorial space is 12 miles,” he said.

He said that the Turkish investigation had left no doubt that the aircraft, a two seat F-4 Phantom, had briefly strayed over Syria but had been shot down after leaving its territory.

The television network reported that the aircraft’s wreckage and its ejection seats had been found Sunday off the Syrian coast. The search continued for the crewmen, the report said.

In Brussels, NATO spokesman Oanu Lungescu told Turkey’s Anatolia News Agency that the allies would meet Tuesday to discuss the downing of the jet.

Syria has said it shot down the plane because it was flying low into its airspace and appeared to have hostile intentions. “It was an accident, certainly not an attack,” the Syrian foreign minister, Jihad Makdissi, told the Turkish news channel A Haber on Saturday.

Davutoglu said the jet was on a training exercise to test Turkey’s radar capabilities. He said the aircraft was flying alone, without weapons, and that the Syrian authorities had made no attempt to contact it. When the Turkish authorities realized it had strayed into Syrian airspace,the pilots were warned to leave and did so immediately, Davutoglu said. Minutes later, the Syrians fired on the plane, which was shot down a mile inside international airspace, he said.

Turkey had not yet decided what action to take, the foreign minister said.

Meanwhile, Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel hide-outs deep inside northern Iraq on Sunday, and Kurdish rebels killed one policeman and wounded three others in a roadside bomb attack inside Turkey on Sunday, authorities said. The Turkish air campaign was the second against rebel hideouts in Iraq after the killing of eight Turkish soldiers along the Iraq border Tuesday.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with his military chiefs Saturday, his third crisis meeting since the downing of the jet on Friday, and he convened a discussion with leaders of the Turkish opposition parties Sunday. Erdogan was expected to make a statement Tuesday.

On Sunday, however, Davutoglu’s Twitter feed suggested a hardening of Turkey’s stance toward Syria.

“No one should try to test the capacity of Turkey,” he wrote. “Turkey has never acted alone concerning Syria. Has always been part of regional and intl initiatives.” He added that Turkey had discussed the matter with Russian and Chinese officials, who praised its “calm approach.”

The plane’s downing drew criticism from other countries pushing Syrian President Bashar Assad to end his crackdown on an armed uprising. Opposition activists say the conflict has killed 14,000 people, mostly civilians, over the past 15 months.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Sunday that he was “gravely concerned” about the jet’s downing, while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sharply called it an “open and grave violation of international law” that would justify retaliation.

In Syria, violence between the government and rebel groups continued Sunday, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in London, reporting that 38 people were killed around the country. The Local Coordination Committees, a grassroots group in Syria, said 43 had died. The committees said 14 of the victims were in Deir el-Zour, a city in eastern Syria. Eight were reported killed in the western city of Idlib, near the Turkish border, and in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, seven died, according to the committees.

The group said the situation in Deir el-Zour was particularly grave, with 1,500 people wounded in heavy government shelling in recent days. “People still can’t pull out corpses due to intense gunfire,” it said in an e-mailed statement.

Foreign journalists are generally not allowed in Syria, so it was not possible to independently verify the reports.

Meanwhile, members of disparate Syrian groups opposed to the rule of Assad tried Sunday in Brussels to hash out their differences and plan for a democratic transition.

The different opposition groups are riven by divisions over whether outside military intervention would help or hurt the country - and whether to engage in dialogue with Assad’s regime. In addition, some Islamists opposed to Assad’s rule are not viewed by other opposition members as true democrats.

The focus of the conference, which runs through today and had about 50 participants, was on planning for a post-Assad transition to democracy.

The European Union helped finance the conference. But Pierre Vimont, a top EU diplomat, said it was for the Syrian people, not the EU, to plan the country’s future.

Information for this article was contributed by Sebnem Arsu and Rod Nordland of The New York Times; and by Selcan Hacaoglu, Bassem Mroue, Don Melvin, Frances D’Emilio, Jamal Halaby, Tom Strong, Don Melvin of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/25/2012

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