Turkey angry at Russia airstrikes on terrorists in Syria: Commentator

Press TV has conducted an interview with Mark Sleboda, an international relations and security analyst from Moscow, to discuss Russia’s response to Turkish provocative act of hitting a Russian bomber over Syrian airspace.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: We have some American officials actually admit that the Russian jet was not over Turkish airspace but over Syrian airspace. How can they get away with doing such an act against international law?

Sleboda: Ok, well this is kind of an expected walk-back coming from an anonymous source taking as a word of mid position between the Turkish and Russian version of events. It was always rather incredulous to believe that the Russian aircraft was hit over Turkish airspace and then somehow magically crashed four kilometers into Syrian airspace.

What I think this does though is that completely destroys the Turkish argument that the motivation for doing this was to protect their airspace and makes it clear that the motivation was actually revenge for Russian targeting of Turkish sponsored Turkmen jihadists allied with al-Qaeda in the exact area where the attack took place near the Syrian border.

Press TV: How do you think Moscow’s going to react to obviously a flagrant violation?

Sleboda: Russia has only announced three measures: One that all Russian airstrikes will not be accompanied by Russian air-to-air combat for protection.

Two, the Russian missile cruiser or the Moskva, which carries the S300 air defense equivalent, has been moved to the coast and basically will shoot down anything that threatens Russian planes.

I wouldn’t point that ... the Turkish aircrafts violate Syrian airspace as they have routinely done while bombing the Kurds as well as Iraqi airspace.

And the third measure is that Russia will end immediately military relations with Turkey, but I think we can expect that is not the only measure.

Lavrov has already called for Russians to boycott Turkish vacations and a lot of Russians’ vacation in Turkey that will be a ... to the Turkish economy.

I think we can expect further economic measures. And I think also we can expect some covert measures. And if the Kurdish YPG suddenly came within acquired a large number of military equipment, I wouldn’t at all be surprised.

Press TV: Why do you think this happens at this time in your perspective? Why would Turkey chose this time to shoot this plane down?

Sleboda: I think it’s right quoted that the motivation is Russians’ attacks on these Turkmen jihadists. Erdogan just last week summoned the Russian ambassador and warned him exactly this, not to pursue these.

It was interfering with Turkey’s plans to establish a terrorist safe haven within northern Syria. And these Turkmen were their proxies. They thought very strongly about this.

And just last night very ugly Erdogan diverting from his airspace defense argument once again said that these Turkmen that Russia was targeting that are ally with al-Qaeda in Syria, were his kinsmen.

And he claimed the right to defend them, a rather odd diversion and making it clear that the motivation was not airspace or type of self-defense but was defense of Turkish proxy assets in Syria.

Press TV: How likely is this incident to exacerbate the situation in Syria, because we’ve seen basically that the United States has come to the defense of the Turks announcing that to make sure that the situation is deescalated so obviously? What we saw after the Paris attacks and we saw what appear that France was coming and with Russia and warning to attack the terrorists of course now we’ve seen Hollande with Obama and basically it appear that he may be backing off as force working with Russians. What do you think is the next scenario that we’re looking at now in Syria?

Sleboda: Yeah, it seems Hollande has been put back on the US ... Obama snapped them in there and drew him back from any kind of steps towards the Russian position.

This does come rather again and rather curious time geopolitically. I don’t think there was really any chance of any grand coalition against ISIS (Daesh).

Russia and the US have quite opposite goals in Syria. And the US remains fixated on regime change. And it would inevitably force the rest of its allies towards backing this position.

Any kind of managed pruning ISIS towards that ... I think everyone kind of recognizes right now that the US for more than a year and its allies have not been fighting ISIS to defeat it, but to direct it against the Syrian government.

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