Turkish Cabinet meeting on Syria

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

AA photo

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Cabinet are currently meeting, and Turkish Air Force Chief of Operations General Ateş Mehmet İrez is also briefing Cabinet about the latest developments.

Breaking his silence about the incident on Sunday, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu provided detailed information of how the incident took place and accused Syria of misinforming the international community.

“It was a routine training flight, undertaking a radar system test in respect of national security over the recent developments on the Mediterranean coast. Our plane was unarmed and was performing a solo flight. Its flight was in no way a hostile one. To consider this flight as a threat is either an indication of bad intentions or amateurishness,” Davutoğlu said.

Davutoğlu also said the government was acting in the framework of an action plan, the implementation of which would be scheduled along a certain timeline. In the first phase, Turkey launched a massive campaign to rightly inform the international community, in a move to challenge Syrian assertions that the incident took place in Syrian airspace.

As a member of NATO, Turkey has called the alliance for a meeting under Article 4 of the NATO treaty on Tuesday. This article stipulates consultative meetings if any member country thinks that its territorial integrity, political independence or security is under threat. Turkey will make a comprehensive representation of the incident at the meeting, to be held at the level of permanent representatives.

Likewise, Turkey is also planning to bring the issue before the United Nations. The Turkish Foreign Ministry has already sent letters to the term presidents of both the U.N. General Assembly and the Security Council.

Ambassadors from the Arab League, the European Union and NATO countries were invited to the Foreign Ministry on June 24 for detailed information on how the incident occurred.

In the meantime, Turkey issued a strongly worded note of protest against Syria on June 23. The note accused Damascus of aggression against Turkey and was delivered to Syria’s consul general based in Istanbul, the Hürriyet Daily News has learned. It also underlined that it reserved its rights to compensation in light of international law.