There is one point on which all sides agree after the downing of a Russian fighter bomber by Turkey - it is that this is a very serious incident. The details of what actually happened are already being disputed vigorously. The Turks are claiming the Russian S-24 was inside their airspace and that they have radar tracking data to prove this. Moreover, they say that over a period of five minutes, the Russian pilot was warned ten times that he was violating Turkish airspace. Cockpit voice recorders will be examined closely. Initial skepticism rests on the fact that five minutes in the flight of a fast jet means that it can cover a lot of ground. If the Russian plane was flying over Turkey when it was first warned, was it still there five minutes later? The Russians of course deny any violation. This is not, however, the first time that Moscow's warplanes have been accused of trespassing. Syrian aircraft have done the same thing and one of Assad's jets and a helicopter were also shot down this year by the Turks. The seriousness of this incident is underscored by the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO whose founding treaty obliges all members to go to the support of any member that is attacked. NATO has made a point of reiterating this commitment to Ankara in the light of what it claimed were past Russian air incursions. What matters now is how this affects the air campaign against Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) and from the Russians' point of view, its air support for the Assad dictatorship. It looked as if Moscow and Washington had reached an uneasy understanding at last week's G20 summit in the Turkish resort of Antalya. There would be coordination between Russian and American forward air controllers and more importantly, strategic consultation over the targeting of Daesh positions. The Russians may now be of a mind to ditch that deal. Vladimir Putin's domestic reputation rests on him being the strong man who acts decisively. His vow to destroy Daesh came after the terrorists' destruction of the Russian Metrojet airliner over the Sinai desert. What will be his reaction to this deadly confrontation with Turkey? The irony is that both Moscow and Ankara have been cheating in their commitment to strike at Daesh. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan used the suicide bombing outrages in Suruc and Ankara as an excuse to unleash airstrikes against the Kurdish PKK. Putin has used his aerial campaign to strike far more regularly at the Free Syrian army than the terrorists in Raqqa. This has of course colored Turkey's perception of all Russian air operations. In its implacable opposition to the Assad regime it first permitted the almost unrestricted passage of Daesh terrorists and supplies to Syria, in addition to its more formal support for the Free Syrian army. Its catastrophic assistance to Daesh has deepened Syria's tragedy. It has also opened the door to full-on Russian intervention in support of Assad. Therefore Turkey has, very probably inadvertently, engineered the crisis which has now arisen. The only obvious beneficiaries of this dangerous confrontation between Russia and Turkey and by extension, between Russia and NATO, are the Daesh fanatics in Raqqa.
