ISTANBUL — Just as was feared when Russia intervened in the dysfunctional effort to eradicate Islamic State militants two months ago, the vortex of geopolitical battles in Syria has drawn Cold War-era rivals into deadly confrontation with each other.
Three Russian airmen died Tuesday and a Russian SU-24 warplane was shot out of the sky by Turkish F-16 fighter jets, the first known casualties in the Kremlin’s ranks since it sent air power, naval forces and a 2,000-strong ground contingent to Syria in September.
Russia says its mission is to fight Islamic State militants in Syria. But NATO member nations and allied Arab states that are also waging airstrikes against Islamic State charge that Russia’s bombings are directed at U.S.- and European-backed Syrian rebels fighting to oust President Bashar Assad, the Kremlin’s most important Middle East ally.
Among the rebel forces in the Russians’ gun sights are Syrian Turkmen, ethnic kin of the Turks who are among the fiercest opponents of Assad’s government and as such de facto enemies of Russia. Turkey had warned Moscow last week to cease attacks on the Syrian Turkmen, who hold territory near the Assad government’s shrinking stronghold around Latakia, on the Mediterranean Sea.
Turkish F-16 fighter jets patrolling the volatile coastal border area shot down the Russian warplane early Tuesday after it penetrated Turkish airspace and ignored repeated warnings to leave, the Turkish Armed Forces Command said in a statement. Both Russian pilots on board ejected but were killed by Syrian rebel fighters as they parachuted into the enemy territory they had been sent to attack, rebel sources told Turkish media.
A third Russian airman aboard an MI-8 helicopter dispatched to look for the bailed pilots was killed when Syrian rebels fired on the search-and-rescue operation, forcing the chopper to land in neutral territory and evacuate the surviving crewmen.
The Kremlin immediately and vehemently condemned the attack, summoning a Turkish diplomat in Moscow to receive an official protest that called the shoot down “an unfriendly act.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov canceled a planned visit to Ankara on Wednesday, and Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that “serious consequences” would follow.
“Neither our pilots nor our jet threatened the territory of Turkey,” Putin insisted, accusing Ankara of aiding Islamic State by secretly marketing the oil it extracts from occupied Iraqi territory. “The loss today is a stab in the back, carried out by the accomplices of terrorists. I can’t describe it in any other way.”
President Barack Obama defended Turkey’s action and suggested that such unfortunate incidents could be avoided if Russia would focus on defeating Islamic State rather than attacking the rebels fighting to oust Assad.
“Turkey, like every country, has a right to defend its territory and its airspace,” Obama said at a news conference alongside French President Francois Hollande, who was visiting the White House on a mission to strengthen the multinational coalition taking on the extremist group also known as Daesh or ISIL. “Our view from the start has been that Russia is welcome to be part of this broad-based coalition that we’ve set up. … The challenge has been Russia’s focus on propping up Assad rather than focusing on ISIL.”
Obama urged Russia and Turkey to “step back” from the brink of an intensifying conflict and keep in mind their common goal of containing the militants who have waged horrific acts of terror on both. There had been high hopes after the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris and the bombing of a Russian passenger jet over Egypt’s Sinai on Oct. 31 that better collaboration between the eastern and western powers would result in their shared objective of eliminating Islamic State.