Turkey says it will take ‘steps’ after Syria shot down jet

BEIRUT — Turkey vowed to take “necessary steps” after concluding Syria had shot down a Turkish fighter jet along the Syrian border on Friday, sending tensions soaring in the already fraught region.

In a terse statement issued early Saturday after an emergency security meeting summoned by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish government said an F-4 fighter jet that went missing over the southern Turkish province of Hatay had been brought down by Syria. The statement said Turkey “will make its final position known once the evidence is uncovered and will determinedly take necessary steps.”

The Turkish military said Friday it had lost contact with the plane shortly before noon. A hunt was under way in the eastern Mediterranean for the jet’s two missing pilots, and Syrian vessels were helping Turkish ships and helicopters with the search, Erdogan told journalists earlier in the evening.

The episode underscored the region’s jittery mood as the Syrian revolt degenerates into an armed conflict many fear will spill beyond its borders and draw in its neighbors. Compounding the tensions, Turkey has emerged as the main conduit for the new supplies of weaponry now flowing to Syrian rebels with funds from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and facilitated in part by the United States.

The government’s statement capped a day of unconfirmed reports Syria was responsible for bringing the plane down and had subsequently apologized. Al-Manar, the TV network run by Lebanon’s pro-Syrian Hezbollah movement, quoted Syrian “security sources” in Damascus as saying it had been shot down, and Turkey’s state news agency Anatolia quoted Erdogan as saying Syria had offered an apology.

But Erdogan told reporters he could not confirm Syria had apologized.

Nearly 30,000 Syrian refugees have flooded into southern Turkey over the past year, and the leadership of the rebel Free Syrian Army is being housed at one of the refugee camps.

Across the border in the Syrian provinces of Idlib and Latakia, the rebels have been waging pitched battles with the Syrian army as it seeks to recover territory that had fallen out of government control.

The disappearance of the Turkish plane came a day after a Syrian pilot flew his MiG-21 fighter jet to Jordan and requested political asylum, in the first such defection since the uprising began. The defection was a major embarrassment for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and is likely to have led to increased vigilance around Syria’s borders in case other pilots attempt to flee.