Syria-Turkey, Assad: “I didn’t want to take down the Ankara jet”

Bashar al-Assad did not want to demolish the Turkish jet that caused a crisis between Ankara and Damascus. The Syrian president himself revealed this in an interview with the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet. Assad also assured that he will not allow political tensions between the two countries to degenerate into an open conflict.

“We learned that (the plane) belonged to Turkey after the shooting,” he said. “The plane was flying in an air corridor used in the past three times by the Israeli air force,” said Assad, who said he was “100% sorry”. “I would have been happy if the shot down jet had been Israeli,” he added.

After the destruction of one of its F4 Phantoms by the Syrian army on June 22nd, Turkey, denouncing a hostile act, warned that it would strengthen security in the region excluding armed conflicts with Damascus; last week he deployed troops along the Syrian border as a preventive measure. Relations between the two former allies have deteriorated since the beginning of the repression of anti-government protests in Syria, which has caused more than 10,000 victims since mid-March 2011, according to United Nations estimates.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly denounced the repression orchestrated by Syrian forces and Turkey hosts many Syrian refugees fleeing violence and members of the Free Syrian Army (ASL), composed mainly of deserters from the Syrian regular army.

(03 July 2012)