... apology itself can be interpreted differently (it is addressed to the families of the deceased pilots and in Turkish, sounds somewhat like “Alright, guys, we made a mistake, no hard feelings, OK?”), there is no doubt that the President of Turkey intended his letter to be taken as an apology. Judging by the reaction from the Kremlin, and given the fact that the Press Secretary for the President of Russia, Dmitry Peskov, is fluent in Turkish, it would seem that the text of the apology has ...
... Iran, Ukraine, NATO, BMD, gas pipelines and other matters were swept under the rug. But this mutual hypocrisy could not last forever. In a way, the ongoing crisis became possible only because the notion of a strategic partnership between Russia and Turkey had remained only on paper. Lacking the proper strategic depth, it did not pass a reality check and collapsed as a house of cards.
Still, though the strategic partnership had been mostly imaginary, the losses appeared to be more than real. Today ...
... violating Turkish airspace for 17 seconds. Moreover, as the Russian side
maintained
, “the plane was shot down four kilometres from the border, inside Syria”. Instead of shooting the plane down the Turkish fighter could have forced it to leave Turkey’s airspace, if such a violation had indeed occurred. Then the relationship would not have been damaged and a crisis could have been averted, but as we all know, when it comes to history the subjunctive mood does not exist.
While Erdogan is ...
... parachuting to the ground was an outright war crime. In situations like this, calls for revenge can ring loud and clear.
Instead of seeking revenge, Russia's response to the crisis has been ... to "
seriously reconsider
" its relationship with Turkey.
No missile attacks, no retaliatory air strikes, no expulsion of Turkish diplomats. Just a serious reconsideration. And given the gravity of the situation, some reconsideration is certainly in order.
Russia should be applauded for showing restraint ...
Within hours, the downed Su-24 took Turkey–Russia relations, which had been cooling for some time, to a new low, thus marking a peak of tensions between Ankara and Moscow. There is more to what happened on November 24, 2015 than meets the eye. On the one hand, the military, diplomatic ...
... simultaneously with their radars allowing the operator to peep deep into the adversary’s airspace. S-400 and Fort, the naval version of S-300, will cover almost the entire territory of Syria including the capital Damascus, southern regions of Turkey, all of Cyprus and Lebanon as well as half of Israel and Jordan.
Turkey and Israel are likely to be outraged at this decision given the fact that they have been in control of the Levantine sky for many years.
The deployment of these systems by ...
The incident with the downed Russian plane on the border between Syria and Turkey on November 24, 2015 became a massive talking point all around the world. However, the event did not come as much of a surprise for specialists. Anything can be expected from the authorities of a country that has been astonishing the world with ...
