Turkey unilaterally moved border 5 miles south into Syria in '12 prompting shootdown of Russian jet
One major fact has been ignored in most western coverage of the Turkish attack on a Russian jet since the shoot down earlier this week.
There is a reason a Russian pilot ignored Turkish warnings that it was approaching Turkish airspace. That is because the Russian plane was operating within Syrian airspace until just 17 seconds after the Russian jet crossed the actual border. The missing context to this incident is that for three years the Turkish military has been threatening to fire on aircraft that enter a unilaterally declared no-fly zone that extends five miles into Syrian territory.
Most Americans never learned the fact, as The UK Guardian reported, that Turkey has set up a no-fly zone into Syria which the Russians have now challenged: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/26/russia-turkey-jet-mark-galeotti
McClatchey was one of the few exceptions in the U.S. media to have reported this important fact. That wire service reported on October 4 an incident on the Syrian border with Turkey near where the shootdown of a Russian SU-24 occurred last Sunday. The article highlighted the risk of further incidents of this sort involving Russian aircraft operating against opposition encampments on the border. Three years ago, Turkey unilaterally claimed a no-fly zone five miles deep into Syria, and has since maintained its threat to shoot down aircraft that approach the border. Opposition groups fighting to overthrow the Syrian government have taken this as an opportunity to set up camps along that de facto border safe zone.
Al Yamdiyyah hosts a tent camp for internally displaced Syrians and a hospital, run by the French-based Doctors Without Borders. The bomb struck in the village just a few hundred yards from the actual border, wounding several townspeople, local residents said. The Doctors Without Borders hospital, which is about 50 yards from where the bomb landed, was damaged and evacuated.
The town, in a mountainous region of northern Latakia province, has been a prime route for smuggling people and goods between Turkey and Syria and reportedly has functioned as a key entry for weapons shipped to Syrian rebels by the U.S.-led Friends of Syria group of Western and Middle Eastern countries.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article37739349.html#storylink=cpy
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