Davutoglu: Shooting Down of Helicopter 'Punishment' for Syria
Turkey’s frustration with the Damascus regime going unpunished, even for using chemical weapons, played a major role in shooting down a Syrian helicopter.
First, let’s have look how the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government’s spokesman and Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc voiced his own and his party’s reaction to the US-Russia accord on elimination of the Baath regime’s chemical weapons: "Until today, according to official counts, about 120,000 people have died in Syria including children, women and youth. None of them were killed with chemical weapons until Aug. 21 at Ghouta. About 110,000 people have been killed with conventional weapons. Assad and his supporters still have those weapons, and they will continue to kill with them. Won’t anyone be held responsible for the massacres? The events we live through make us rebel. The answers to these questions are not in the US-Russia agreement. Turkey’s attitude is humanitarian. We will do our part."
Without fully grasping what Arinc meant, the factors that led to shooting down a Syrian helicopter by a Turkish warplane the next day on grounds of violating Turkish airspace can’t be understood.
The Syrian helicopter that violated Turkish airspace was not actually shot down because of the violation. It was shot down because those who rule Turkey are furious and upset with the entire world and because they feel extremely isolated.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, nine days after the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack said, "A limited intervention against Syria won’t satisfy us. It should be like in Kosovo. You can’t come, hit for a day or two and leave. It must lead to surrender of the regime." He then declared Turkey was "ready to take part in any kind of coalition against Syria."
