Lauren Williams in Yayladagi, Roland Oliphant in Moscow and Richard Spencer, Middle East Editor, report on the circumstances that led to the downing of the Russian jet.
The dogfight did not come out of the blue. For days, Russian jets had been roaring along the Turkish border, bombing the hills on the Syrian side in support of an Assad regime attack on rebel forces.
Around 9am local time, the Turks decided they had had enough. As two Sukhoi-24 fighter bombers flew over a spit of Turkish territory that juts into Syria, they scrambled two of their own fighters and issued warnings.
The Turkish jets, F-16s sold to Ankara by their close Nato allies the United States, engaged and shot down one of the SU-24s. The time was 9.24am.
A Russian war plane crashing in flames in a mountainous area in northern Syria after it was shot down by Turkish fighter jets near the Turkish-Syrian Photo: REUTERS
The downed plane had already, according to one account, released its payload of air-to-ground missiles on the rebels beneath.
The reality of a dirty war, one that is filmed and broadcast online in real time, was quickly brought home to a Russian audience that had cheered on the latest superpower intervention in the Middle East’s battles.
Within minutes, two videos had been posted on Youtube: one of the Turkmen rebels the Russians had been bombing firing machine guns at the solitary figure of a pilot dangling under an orange parachute, slowly jerking his way towards the ground.
The other showed the rebels gathered round a body, the eyes of the pilot staring open but lifeless. “Allahu Akbar,” the rebels shouted.
The key to understanding this morning’s events lies in the sides Turkey and Russia have taken in Syria’s civil war.
A burning trail as a Russian plane comes down after being shot down near the Turkish-Syrian border Photo: EPA
This has little to do with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, whatever Russian and Syrian regime media may be saying.
The land battle on this patch of border in Syria’s far north-west was between rebels and Syrian regime troops defending Latakia province. To the west, around the city of that name, is the heartland of Syria’s Alawite minority, among whom are numbered the Assads, the country’s rulers of four decades.
In the east, in the hills where the Russian jet came down 2.5 miles south-west of the border, are villages occupied by ethnic Turkmen — members of the Turkish-speaking people of northern Syria and Iraq.
The Turkmen are historically hostile to the Bashar al-Assad regime, and formed their own militias to fight it in Syria’s civil war. They are motivated by politics rather than religion, although most are Sunni Muslim, but fought alongside a variety of moderate and Islamist rebel groups.
A Turkmen soldier with a machine gun is seen as taking aim in the Bayirbucak region in northern Latakia province of Syria Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The war here has been tough. The front line has moved back and forth in recent weeks, and Russian bombing in support of the regime has become more intense.
Only last week, the Turkish government complained about the effect on Turkmen civilians to the United Nations security council.
«The ongoing intense aerial bombardment which reportedly included use of cluster bombs by the Russian air forces and the land offensive by the Syrian regime forces have caused heavy civilian casualties,» the letter, sent on Saturday, said.
«These deplorable actions targeting civilians can in no way be justified under the pretext of combating terrorism.”
Over the weekend, more than 1,500 civilians flooded across the border into Turkey seeking refuge. Another 5,000, according to reports, headed to a refugee camp nearby but inside Syria.
The statement by President Vladimir Putin in response to the incident claimed that these particular Russian jets had been in combat against “Isil” terrorists who included “a concentration of militants largely from the Russian Federation”.
“They were fulfilling their direct duty of preventing attacks by terrorists who might at any moment return to Russia,” he said.
Vladimir Putin Photo: AP
Independent analysts of the Syrian war confirm that there are up to three separate groups of fighters in the area with Chechen leaders — militants from the Muslim autonomous republic in the Russian Federation with the longest history of Islamist violence.
They are however allied to Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s local affiliate, not Isil. It is not clear how far they are from the scene of today’s clash.
What the bombers were intending to do after dropping their bombs is unclear. When Russian jets wandered into Turkish air-space before, in an incident last month which both sides were keen to play down, the explanation was that they came under fire from a surface-to-air missile and mistakenly crossed the border as they took evasive action due to fog.
On this occasion, the flight route released by the Turkish ministry of defence made it appear as if they simply took a short cut across Turkish air-space as they headed back to one of the two military bases being used by the Russians near Latakia city.
However, what mattered to the Turks was that they were flying over their air-space, while engaged in military operations against ethnic Turks.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, and Russian President Valdimir Putin Photo: AP
The Turkish military say that as the jets approached their air-space they issued warnings; 10 in total, over a period of five minutes.
«The data we have is very clear. There were two planes approaching our border, we warned them as they were getting too close,» one official said.
«We warned them to avoid entering Turkish airspace before they did, and we warned them many times. Our findings show clearly that Turkish airspace was violated multiple times. And they violated it knowingly.»
When the Russians failed to respond, the F-16s engaged. At this stage, according to the Russian authorities, they were one kilometre into Syrian territory.
No-one has said so far how high up the chain of command the order went to shoot, but it may be that the intent was not to blow the jets up.
In the video, the plane initially falls slowly, with only a small fire from one engine. That suggests it was hit by cannon fire, not an air-to-air missile which would have destroyed the plane instantly.
The damage was light enough to allow the two pilots to eject. One video shows them both gradually descending.
Accounts of whether both were hit and killed from the ground were disputed last night, with some Turkish authorities saying that both men were alive. That would certainly seem to be contradicted by the video of one of them, released by a Turkmen militia called Alwiya al-Ashar.
As armed men surround the body — clicking away with mobile phones, the leader says: «The 10th Division has captured a Russian pilot, God is greatest.» The chant of God is greatest — Allahu Akbar — is then repeated.
“They both arrived dead,” said Abu Haroun, a media officer for the group told The Telegraph.
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