Syria Shoots Down Turkish Warplane, Fraying Ties Further

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Turkey announced Friday that Syrian forces had shot down a Turkish warplane with two crew members over the Mediterranean, a potentially ominous turn for the worse in relations already frayed because of Turkey’s support for Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.
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The measured wording of the announcement suggested that Turkey had not yet concluded that the Syrian action was provocative, and it acknowledged that Syrian rescue teams were cooperating in trying to locate the aircraft and crew. But the statement also left open the possibility that Turkey, a NATO member, would respond militarily, an outcome that could further complicate and widen the Syrian conflict.
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The Syrian Defense Ministry said later in a statement carried by the official Syrian Arab News Agency that its antiaircraft gunners had hit an unidentified aircraft flying at “very low altitude and at high speed” over Syria’s territorial waters less than a mile offshore, causing it to crash into the sea near the village of Om al-Tuyour. The statement said it was later found that the aircraft was a “Turkish military plane that entered Syrian airspace and was dealt with according to laws observed in such cases.”

Mr. Erdogan is one of the most strident critics of Syria’s sharp repression of its antigovernment uprising, now in its 16th month. Turkey has allowed more than 32,000 Syrian refugees to seek sanctuary and has permitted Syria’s opposition forces and dissidents in exile to organize and funnel supplies from Turkey over the 550-mile border with Syria.
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Russia’s Interfax news service reported Friday that Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia said that relations with the Americans are complicated by “the American mentality, the thought one has instilled since one’s childhood — we are No. 1 in the world and we are infallible.”