On Tuesday, Turkey said that after repeated warnings over 5 minutes, Turkish F-16s shot down a fighter jet flying over its territory near the Syrian border. Russia's Defense Ministry said the jet was Russian, that it hasn't had any contact with the pilots since they parachuted out of the Su-24, and that it is "looking into the circumstances of the crash of the Russian jet." Russia said its jet was brought down by artillery fire and added, "The Ministry of Defense would like to stress that the plane was over the Syrian territory throughout the flight."
Turkey, a member of NATO, warned Russian warplanes about flying over its territory in October and shot down a Russian-made drone two weeks later, but this is a worrisome escalation in what's already a geopolitical tinder pile. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the pilots parachuted into the Turkmen Mountains of Syria's northern Latakia province. Turkey generally supports the Syrian Turkmen in the region, which has recently been under attack from the Russian-backed forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russia backs Assad, while Turkey wants him out of power. Both sides are purportedly fighting the Islamic State.
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