What happened<\/b>. Turkey claims the Russian plane crossed into Turkish airspace and failed to respond to repeated warnings. Russia claims it can prove its plane was over Syria the whole time. We will see if one version or the other will be generally accepted or whether a contentious muddle will continue indefinitely (cf. MH-17). However, even if the Turkish version prevails, the Russian plane at most would have been over Turkey for a well under a minute and presented no threat to anything or anyone inside Turkey. As stated by Valeriy Burkov, a Russian military pilot and recipient of the Hero of Russia medal: \u201cIt\u2019s clear that this was a premeditated action, they were prepared and just waited for a Russian plane to show up. It wasn\u2019t downed because of pilot error, or because he was trigger-happy or whatever. This is preplanned, premeditated action.\u201d That assessment is likely true even if the aircraft passed momentarily into Turkey. <\/p>\n
Motives<\/b>: While the facts of the incident are murky, the motives on the part of Turkey \u2013 and specifically, of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan \u2013 are not. They include:<\/p>\n
Derailing any possibility of Russia-West accord on Syria and common action against ISIS<\/b>: This is Erdogan\u2019s top goal. Since the Paris attacks, there has been a huge growth in Western opinion favoring cooperation with Russia on crushing a common enemy: ISIS. While the fate of Assad remains a sticking point, public opinion, media, and even officials of western governments, especially in Europe, increasingly see the need to worry about ISIS first, Assad later \u2013 if at all.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Saving ISIS and comparable jihad terror groups<\/b>: There can now be no doubt that in the confrontation between ISIS, al-Nusra (al-Qaeda), Ahrar ash-Sham, the \u201cArmy of Conquest\u201d and the rest of the jihad menagerie against the civilized world, Erdogan and Turkey are on the side of the former. The canard that Russia is not hurting ISIS, already punctured by the downing of the St. Petersburg airliner in the Sanai, can now be laid to rest. ISIS and Turkey\u2019s other proxies are in danger, and cooperation between Russia and the West could seal their fate. In particular, Turkey needs to keep control of part of its border with Syria to maintain ISIS\u2019s lifeline for oil exports and for the traffic of terrorists in and out of Syria.<\/p>\n
Cash cow<\/b>. ISIS\u2019s oil exports depend on access to Turkey, reaping millions for Turkish middlemen. Whether or how Erdogan\u2019s AK Party and cronies may profit from this trade is not clear, but it would be na\u00efve to rule it out. At the recent G-20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, Russian President Vladimir Putin embarrassed Western leaders \u2013 and in particular his host, Erdogan \u2013 by presenting undeniable proof of how ISIS funds itself through oil exports via Turkey. It was only after this that the U.S. joined in strikes against ISIS oil tanker trucks, something that presumably American intelligence had been aware of already. (Reportedly the US, unlike Russia, has given ISIS truck convoys 45 minutes\u2019 notice prior to striking them \u2013 certainly more consideration than the Su-24 was afforded.)<\/p>\n
Turkish ground presence in Syria<\/b>. The Su-24\u2019s two-man crew parachuted down into an area controlled by Turkmen militia, which fired on them with small arms as they descended. Their fate is not reliably known. [Russian and Syrian commandos later recovered surviving Capt. Konstantin Murakhtin. He said there were no warnings from Turkey<\/a>.] The Turkmen militia, who cooperate with al-Nusra and other jihad groups against the Syrian government and Kurdish militias \u2013 both enemies of ISIS \u2013 are an essential asset of Ankara\u2019s in keeping control of the portion of the border abutting Turkey\u2019s Hatay Province. They are controlled by embedded Turkish intelligence officers. The firing on the parachuting Russian crew, irrefutably recorded on video, is a war crime, for which the Turkish government bears command responsibility and criminal accountability. (One online comment on a video of a \u201cmilitia\u201d commander claiming \u201ccredit\u201d for shooting at the Russians asserts that from his accent he is identifiable as a Turk, presumably an intelligence officer, not a local Syrian Turkman. I am unable to confirm this claim.) [In a further aggravating development, a Russian marine was reported killed<\/a> when \u201cmoderate\u201d Free Syrian Army terrorists shot down a Russian rescue helicopter with a U.S.-supplied TOW missile.]<\/p>\n Western reactions<\/b>: Mixed. Some media have taken evident glee in the downing of the Russian plane, as stated in one headline: \u201cThe Russians had it coming.\u201d In his Washington meeting today with French President Fran\u00e7ois Hollande, US President Barack Obama seemingly accepted the Turkish version of events and justified the shootdown, stating that \u201cTurkey, like every country, has a right to defend its territory and its airspace.\u201d (One wonders if \u201cany country\u201d includes Syria, whose airspace is violated daily by US, French, and other countries\u2019 aircraft striking targets without permission from Damascus in support of jihadists seeking to overthrow that country\u2019s government.) At an emergency NATO meeting, some skepticism was expressed about Turkey\u2019s action: \u201cDiplomats present at the meeting told Reuters that while none of the 28 NATO envoys defended Russia\u2019s actions, many expressed concern that Turkey did not escort the Russian warplane out of its airspace.\u201d The NATO governments are no doubt aware of Turkey\u2019s past provocations against Syria, well before the advent of the Russian air campaign, staging border incidents seeking to trigger a Syrian response that could be depicted as an \u201cattack on Turkey\u201d justifying an Article 5 response. [One American military expert concludes the Turkish claim does not hold up and is a clear attempt to \u201cNATO-ize\u201d the conflict<\/a>. Democrat-GOP establishment \u201cHillary Christie<\/a>\u201d may finally get the NATO-Russia clash they crave.] <\/p>\n Russian response<\/b>: Putin made a harsh statement at Sochi prior to a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan: \u201cToday’s loss is linked to a stab in the back delivered to us by accomplices of terrorists. Today’s tragic event will have serious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations.\u201d Some form of retaliation is widely expected. Among the options are energy supply and tourism. Turkey is heavily dependent on Russian gas, but withholding it would hurt Russia financially as well and damage Russia\u2019s reputation as a reliable supplier. Already, there has been some indication that Russians will curtail vacations in Turkey (a popular beach destination, both for price and because Russians don\u2019t need a visa) and of tour companies dropping Turkish vacations packages. Ironically, tourism retaliation primarily will hurt people in Turkish coastal areas, which are generally more secular and Europeanized than central Anatolia \u2013 in short, those disadvantaged would be disproportionately Erdogan opponents, not supporters. Possible military responses include directing intensive airstrikes on Turkmen militia positions [which appear s already to have begun<\/a>], with the aim of killing Turkish intelligence personnel; and stepping up supply to and cooperation with Kurdish forces. The latter would be a deft move, given the popularity of the Kurds in the US<\/p>\n