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Nato and the United Nations have called for calm in the wake of the shooting down of a Russian fighter jet by Turkish aircraft that drew warnings of “serious consequences” from Vladimir Putin.
The Russian president described the incident over Turkey’s volatile border with Syria on Tuesday – the first time a Nato member state has shot down a Russian warplane since the Korean war in the 1950s – as a “stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists” and claimed the Russian plane, a Su-24 bomber, had been downed inside Syria while in action against Chechen militants.
In signs of deepening divisions between the two countries, Russia warned its citizens not to go on holiday in Turkey and its defence ministry cut off contacts with its Turkish counterpart. On Tuesday night, its general staff confirmed that one of the pilots of the downed jet had been killed and a marine died while on a rescue mission. The fate of the jet’s second pilot was unclear.
In Ankara, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, summoned his top generals to an emergency national security meeting to decide Turkey’s next step. The Turkish government said the Russian plane had been warned 10 times to turn back as it approached the border, but had still flown into Turkish airspace for a few seconds. Ankara stressed the incident had followed a string of Russian incursions in recent weeks.
“The reason why worse incidents have not taken place in the past regarding Syria is the cool-headedness of Turkey,” Erdoğan said. “Nobody should doubt that we made our best efforts to avoid this latest incident. But everyone should respect the right of Turkey to defend its borders.”
The US president and Nato both backed the Turkish version of events. Barack Obama said Turkey had a right to defend itself, while the Natosecretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said “assessments we have got from several allies are consistent with” the Turkish account.
Stoltenberg said that Nato stood “in solidarity with Turkey” and its territorial integrity, but called for “calm and de-escalation”, urging Ankara and Moscow to maintain contacts. The UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon called on “all relevant parties to take urgent measures with a view to de-escalate the tensions”.
Ban’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters: “He hopes that a credible and thorough review will clarify the events and help prevent future recurrences.”
Turkmen militiamen in Syria claimed to have shot the pilots as they descended on parachutes from the stricken Su-24 bomber. The Turkmen rebels, who are supported by Ankara and who have been the target of earlier Russian bombing, broadcast a video of what appeared to be a dead Russian pilot.
The rebels also posted footage appearing to show one of their missiles destroying a helicopter while it was on the ground, which they said was a Russian aircraft sent to rescue the downed Su-24 crew, although it was not possible to verify the footage.
A Russian military spokesman later said one of the rescue helicopters had been forced to make an emergency landing after being hit by fire from the ground and a marine on board had been killed.
Within hours of the jet’s downing, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, announced the first reprisal, warning Russian tourists not to go to Turkey, a potentially significant loss of revenue for Ankara. Lavrov compared the terrorist threat there to Egypt, where a Russian airliner was brought down by a bomb earlier this month, and he cancelled a planned trip to Ankara on Wednesday.
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