A week after being shot down by Syrian forces, a Turkish air force fighter jet and its two crew members remain missing at sea. While rescue crews have been searching for it, Turkish officials announced that the EV Nautilus, a research ship that had previously been used to search for the wreck of the Titanic, was being called in to help with finding the wreckage of the F-4 jet.
What also remains unclear a week later is what was the Turkish jet's real mission and how and where it was shot down. As the BBC lays out in a helpful graphic, Ankara and Damascus have given vastly different accounts of the event, which has led to a serious ratcheting up of tensions along the Turkey-Syria border, where the Turkish military is now beefing up its presence and has made clear that any Syrian military activity in the area would now be viewed quite differently than before.
Although the Syrians clearly shot the Turkish jet down without any warning and, based on Damascus's track record, their explanation of the event should be taken with many grains of salt, the questions about what the jet was doing near the Turkish border are important, considering its downing has now put Turkey and Syria -- and perhaps even the region -- many steps closer to all out conflict.
After last week's Syrian downing of a Turkish air force jet, some things are becoming clear. Turkey, while refraining from doing anything rash and doing all it can to get international and NATO backing for its diplomatic efforts, is also leaving itself with a military option for responding to Syria's action. In a speech in parliament today, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Syrian forces to stay away from the now tense border with Turkey or face retaliation from Turkish forces who may perceive their movements as a threat. At the same time, Ankara also sent to the border area a (somewhat symbolic) convoy of fifteen military vehicles, including tanks and armored personnel carriers.
Still, while Ankara is ratcheting up the pressure against Damascus, last week's incident still leaves behind it some big questions that have profound implications for how Turkey, Syria and the allies of both countries will or can move forward. Among these:
For the last few months, Turkey has been executing a rather complicated dance with regards to troubled next door neighbor Syria. While supporting and housing elements of the Syrian opposition, Ankara has continued to insist it only providing aid for "humanitarian" -- rather than military -- efforts inside Syria. And although Ankara has clearly moved far back from its once warm relations with the Assad regime, it is also clearly not interested in a military confrontation with Damascus.
Up until the Arab Spring spilled over so violently into Syria, the rapprochement with Damascus could have been considered one of the great successes of Ankara's outreach to its neighbors. But Turkey-Syria relations have deteriorated as rapidly as the situation inside Syria has, leaving Ankara with some very difficult policy choices, among the most prominent ones being how to deal with the issue of sanctions against the Assad regime. Ankara has suggested for weeks now that it will roll out a host of sanctions aimed at the Damascus regime, but has yet to make the details public. (Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu today said sanctions would soon be announced, after he holds consultations with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is recovering from a recent operation. More details here.) (UPDATE- Ankara Wednesday unveiled its new sanctions program, which includes a freeze on certain Syrian assets in Turkey and a hold on dealing with Syria's Central Bank, among other measures. Details here.)
The issue is, of course, a political one. But for Turkey, which uses Syria as an important trade route and whose imports to the country have boomed in recent years, the sanctions issue is also very much an economic one. In a recent piece in The National, analyst Henri Barkey, says Ankara's hesitation regarding Syria sanctions is strongly influenced by economic concerns:
