Russian pilot's body flown to Ankara after honours

[frigidmagi]

bbc

Turkey has flown the body of the Russian pilot killed after his plane was downed on the Syrian border to Ankara, to be met by Russian diplomats.

Lt Col Oleg Peshkov's coffin was flown to the capital from southern Turkey. It is not yet clear when the body will be repatriated to Russia.

Turkish forces shot down the plane saying it had violated Turkish airspace, which Russia denies.

The incident has sparked a furious row between the two countries.

Russia announced sanctions against Turkey.

Rebels from Syria's ethnic Turkmen community opened fire on Lt Col Peshkov and his co-pilot as they tried to parachute into government-held territory on Tuesday.

The rebels said he had died by the time he reached the ground.

Earlier on Sunday, Lt Col Peshkov's body was received by Turkish authorities at Hatay airport on the Syrian border. A Turkish honour guard carried the coffin on to an air force plane for the flight to Ankara.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu added that the pilot's body had been treated in accordance with Orthodox Christian tradition.

Russian news agencies said the body was accompanied from Hatay to Ankara by the Russian military attache, and would be met by Ambassador Andrei Karlov in the Turkish capital.

The other pilot in the plane, Capt Konstantin Murakhtin, survived and was rescued from rebel-held territory in Syria in a special forces operation.

Capt Murakhtin said he wanted to go back to duty and stay in Syria, saying "someone has to pay" for his colleague's death.
What future for Turkey-Russia relations?

What we know about downing of jet

A decree signed by President Vladimir Putin on Saturday covers imports from Turkey, the work of Turkish companies in Russia and any Turkish nationals working for Russian companies.

The decree also calls for an end to charter flights between the countries.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has refused to apologise to Russia over the incident.

On Friday, he accused Moscow of "playing with fire" in its Syria operations. But on Saturday, he said he was "saddened" by the downing of the jet.

Turkey and Russia have important economic links. Russia is Turkey's second-largest trading partner, while more than three million Russian tourists visited Turkey last year.

[LadyTevar]

Have they found anything that verifies exactly where the plane was flying? Could this all be a GPS hickup? Or, as I fear, is this the resut of Russian military truly breaking airspace, repeatedly, as Turkey claims?

[General Havoc]

Best information I've seen is that the plane did dip, briefly, into Turkey's airspace. Given that this is the sort of thing Russian planes do all the time, I feel confident in this evidence.

[Lys]

Meh there Cold War established some fairly straightforward rules for how this works back during the Cold War: You can violate someone's airspace without starting a war, but in return they can shoot down your aircraft without the same. We did it to the Russians, they did it to us, it was business as usual. This thing too is business as usual, if you don't want to get shot down then stay away from other people's airspace.

[Josh]

Meh there Cold War established some fairly straightforward rules for how this works back during the Cold War: You can violate someone's airspace without starting a war, but in return they can shoot down your aircraft without the same. We did it to the Russians, they did it to us, it was business as usual. This thing too is business as usual, if you don't want to get shot down then stay away from other people's airspace.

That was a different political environment. With a 24 hour media cycle and the attendant constant chatter from the commentariat, we may see different responses emerging.

We also used to have the occasional dust-ups between fighters patrolling over international waters (one book I read years ago had an anecdote from a pilot that said it happened about once a year or so) and of course we also used to bang submarines into each other on rare occasions. But in that media environment it mostly passed without comment.

[Cynical Cat]

Let's also remember that the Turks and Greeks like to violate each other's airspace all the time and Russian and Turkey have very different goals when it comes to what they want Syria to look like. This was Turkey covering itself with a fig leaf while bloodying Russia's nose.