“This was an incident in the making for some time as we have had some near misses in the past few weeks wher Turkey did not fully implement its own rules of engagement.”
“There were two airspace violations, and after that a very high level Russian military delegation came to Turkey to talk about it, including a top air force official. They apologised for one of the incidents, saying that in that case the Russian pilot didn’t speak the language. So we thought we had an understanding and solved the problem.”
“So it’s a surprise that it happened since that visit,” Ulgen, who is also a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But it’s not a surprise in terms of Russian strategy. Since the intervention the Russians have been testing the Turkish response at its borders and its rules of engagement.
“In this case, the pilot was warned a number of times. First at 13 miles out from the Turkish border, and then at 5 miles out, which is when Turkish jets scramble. It went past all those thresholds,” he said.
Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat