Posted on 11/24/2015 1:45:02 PM PST by SeekAndFind
If you’re worried that Turkey’s going to use Article 5 of NATO to drag the U.S. and other western nations into a hot war with Russia, don’t be. Sounds from this response like NATO will fall apart before anyone goes to the mat for the Turks.
NATO ambassadors called on Ankara to show “cool-headedness” on Tuesday following an emergency meeting in Brussels, after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border, diplomats said.
Diplomats present at the meeting told Reuters that while none of the 28 NATO envoys defended Russia’s actions, many expressed concern that Turkey did not escort the Russian warplane out of its airspace.
On the one hand, this wasn’t the first violation of Turkish airspace lately by a Russian jet. Erdogan’s complained about it to NATO before; NATO’s secretary-general said last month that the frequency and duration of the intrusions made it hard to believe Russia isn’t doing it purposefully. Turkey got tired of asking Russia nicely to stay out — and asking, and asking, as they reportedly warned the pilots of the jet that was brought down today 10 times in five minutes to scram ASAP. (Did Russia actually violate their airspace today, though? Moscow denies it.) On the other hand, the point of Article 5 obviously isn’t to trigger a regional war because a Russian jet en route to a target in Syria strayed a mile into Turkish territory or whatever it was. The paradigm case for Article 5 is hundreds of Russian tanks rolling towards Warsaw or Berlin, not one jet being a little too cute about Russia’s new hegemony in western Syria. Show of hands: Who thinks Europe’s militaries are going to spring into action after a long hiatus from major wars to enforce the integrity of Turkish airspace to the last inch?
Putin called the shootdown a “stab in the back” by western allies who are supposed to be fighting ISIS with him and warned of “very serious consequences,” but he might be willing to endure one embarrassment without retaliating in the name of avoiding escalation. Would he be willing to endure two, though?
Turkmen forces in Syria shot dead the two pilots of a Russian jet downed by Turkish warplanes near the border with Turkey on Tuesday as they descended with parachutes, a deputy commander of a Turkmen brigade told reporters.
“Both of the pilots were retrieved dead. Our comrades opened fire into the air and they died in the air,” Alpaslan Celik, a deputy commander in a Syrian Turkmen brigade said near the Syrian village of Yamadi as he held what he said was a piece of a pilot’s parachute.
Turkmen are ethnic Turks in Syria who have no association with the state of Turkey, but that’s not the point. The point is that killing the pilots, while they were defenseless on their way to the ground, will make the affront of the jet being shot down sting even more in Russia. And there’s actually yet another incident in Syria today that the Kremlin can use for anti-western propaganda if it wants, and this one’s on video too. Watch the clip below of Syrian rebels using a TOW missile, presumably supplied by Uncle Sam, to take out a Russian-made helicopter being operated by Assad’s army. RT, a Russian house organ, has already picked it up and claimed that not only was the helicopter on a search-and-rescue mission for the downed jet pilots but a Russian marine was killed in the TOW strike. Why this is circulating so widely online, apart from the gee whiz factor, I don’t know; Russia’s been bombing U.S.-allied rebels since they began flying sorties in Syria so it’s not as if America’s allies attacking Russia’s allies is some strange new escalation of the reality on the ground. The proxy war has been raging for weeks. But between the jet blowing up, the pilots being machine-gunned as they fell to earth, and now U.S. weapons being used to undermine the Russian/Syrian “counterterrorist” effort, there’s ample reason to think things will get worse before they get better. I’m just grateful we’ve got Cool Hand Luke in the White House, laying down “red lines” he doesn’t intend to enforce and issuing warnings that Assad must go which he has no means to follow through on, at the helm of this ship at it enters choppy waters.
anybody have any ideas on what turned it back
Because he was armed and failed to heed warnings to leave!!!
How many Turkish planes needed to be shot down before you recognize he’s not going to cooperate with an “escort” either?
Ignorant diplomats think they can talk their way out of anything.
I didn’t see them rushing to Belgium to negotiate with the suicide bombers....
I just hope cooler heads will prevail until we have a change in occupancy at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
““Always follow the money†.... Rush Limbaugh ...”
It gave us the Uniparty.
How many seconds for the shell to get to the target.
The story goes something like this:
Eastern Iraq, 2004:
Unidentified plane, you are in Iranian airspace, leave at once.
This is a USAF F-15 and I am inside Iraq airspace and I am not leaving.
Unidentified plane, this is Iranian air control, leave at once or I will send planes to eradicate you from the air.
F-15 pilot: I am not leaving, I am in Iraq air space.
Unidentified aircraft, this is your last warning, leave at once or face the consequences.
F-15 pilot: I am waiting.
No further transmissions.
Why didn’t you just escort that Russian plane out of your airspace?
They did, only their escort got a little too close...................
Attaturk was the founder of the ‘modern’ Turkish State as a secular organization..........................
well then I have bad news for him. I know he’s dead.just saying..
apparently the only ones not affiliated with isis and al queda are, for the most part, Kurds, Yazidis and the cew Christian militias.
Google Serena Shim.
All carefully orchestrated.
Only the most sub-human combatant would kill an enemy pilot.
He knew the dangers of Islam and its adherents’ most primitive reasoning, that is why he began it as a secular institution....................
They have been moving backwards since Erdogan’s party took over, back around 2002, I think. That party is explicitly Islamist, and they have been rolling back long-standing secular reforms ever since they got into power.
Obviously, the public attitudes were changing before that, or Erdogan’s Islamist party never could have gotten elected.
im thinking the European NATO countries after Paris will side with Russia on this....and against Turkey...
Normally would be bad but not critical as Turkeys been the Islamic odd man in NATO since day one....
But the US has been the Nato cornerstone....
and if Obama shows his true colors sides with Islam and Turkey .... and against the rest of the European NATO allies.. it gets politically really ugly...
It puts Europe and Russians and one camp .... with the US split off to the other side in the Islamic camp....
I don't see the majority of Americans and majority of our military among them going for that ...but a large minority of Obama diehards and leftist will
Primitive. Now I understand Obama
I think I have this figured out. HomObama was in Turkey the other day. He meets with Erdogen. They decide to look for an opportunity to drag NATO into war with Russia by shooting down a Ruusian plane. Russia responds back. Turkey pulls the Article 5 NATO agreement, where an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all. Now NATO countries get involved in the fight against Russia, in Syria. Assad gets ousted, ISIS takes control of Syria. The Caliphate gets strengthened. HomOBama wins. Turkey, being a Muzzie country should not even be in NATO.
is to push and push to see how far they can go without creating a full-scale war.
That's why they took the Crimea - to take the measure of NATO and the EU. The West swerved and Russia won that game of chicken.
Now Russia played the same game with Turkey, violating their airspace again and again to see how far they could expand their air superiority in the region.
Turkey did not swerve.
NATO is not going to agree with Turkey or with Russia because both of them broke the unwritten rules.
Shooting men in parachutes might be a war crime. It certainly ain’t kosher.
You can bank on it!
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