It is clear with the S-300 movements appearing in the news that Putin had planned something like this to happen.
This gives about a weeks time for Russian forces to easily redeploy with minimal worldwide objections since Russia now has a clear aegis of "we need air defense in the border area for our combat planes" to use.
Its a drop in a bucket (the Su-24 on the sacrificial altar) for a much larger vat of strategic buffer for the Russians to bring under their overall objectives.
Turkey will soon be unable to penetrate or even approach Syrian airspace.
They can escalate by deploying wild weasels, but seeing how this latest effort of theirs has failed to arouse NATOs sympathies on any major level (and if it was some attempt to invoke article V of the charter as some are speculating, it has spectacularly backfired I would say).....I doubt the Turks would do that.
Basically in the name of "honour", they have closed off many options available to them. But then again some Turkish member said honour matters above all else, so there you have it.
Russians on the other hand are long term veterans in these sort of tactics....and they have the resources (long and short term) to do so. Just sit back and watch as the Russians now shore up their presence in the Syrian border areas and probably launch a massive combined offensive up to the Turkish border (to wipe out all Turkish backed proxies)....under the protection afforded to them by S-300 and ship based anti-air.....while Turkey watches on helplessly.
Russians are too smart to retaliate against Turkey itself. They will however put whatever sanctions they can on Turkey and take firm action against pro-Turkey groups in Syria....and probably back the Kurds (Both PKK and Peshmerga) heavily.
Lets wait and see.
