Folllow the money. Turkey does not have that much choice if it want to avoid currency collapse. we dont know how much will be in private accounts of Erdo for shaping this policy.

At this time, the threat of firing even one or two Scuds on turkish soil is enough to ruin the entire turkish tourist season. That’s a lot of billion €€€s and $$$s. Noone in Turkey is that stupid.

Piece of cake or not is entirely subjective, I will say all of NATO/U.S air wars after Vietnam have been easy affairs, because the opponents were always at a qualitative and quantitative disadvantage.

Now this may not be as easy as Libya but I cannot see it taking a similar toll on them as the first Gulf War either.

The problem is rather that any casualties or the cost of the intevention itself would be hard to justify and explain domestically. At this time I think it is highly doubtfull if the US could engage in another war.

In every war there will be some losses but Serbia was Mission Accomplished 😎

Dear friend, you said “…they will destroy Syrian air defenses using Tomahawks first then the Rafale/Stike Eagles will do the rest.” So would you care to expand a little bit as to how much of serbian air defenses were destroyed?

Serbia was mission failed. Milosevic was finally overthrown but by his own people, not NATO.

Turkish Air Force F-4 Super Phantom Friday June 22, over Latakia, Syria used Russian-made self-propelled medium range anti-air Buk-M2 missiles (NATO codenamed SA-11) recently supplied by Moscow. The SA-11 can down aircraft flying at altitudes up to 14 kilometers and Mach 3 speed.
Since the sophisticated weapons were delivered to the Assad regime in recent weeks, it must be assumed that local missile crews had not finished training in their use and would have had to rely on help from their Russian instructors to fire one.

http://www.debka.com/article/22112/Newly-supplied-Russian-Buk-M2-anti-air-missile-used-to-down-Turkish-warplane

Libyan experiment proves that that is not necessary in all cases. Arm the rebels and take out targets from above, works great in desert terrain.

Provided the opponent has no air defence, no air force, and above all: no international backup.

Does it have HARM or equivalent? EW aircraft?

Yes. No.

Theoretically, as it was a Turkish aircraft shot down, could there be a NATO response?

Of course not. NATO is a defensive structure and Turkey was not under attack but rather Turkey was the attacker.

How about waiting to shoot if you’re not at war with someone?:rolleyes:
I’m not sure what kind of threat one aircraft could pose to warrant such an action?

How about the obvious? “this is our ground, GTFO”? :rolleyes:

Given the circumstances, anything else would either seem insane, or simply show unwillingness or impotence by Syrian authorities to deal with the situation accordingly.

Erdogan did not confirm reports that Damascus had apologised for shooting down the plane.

http://www.rt.com/news/turkey-contact-aircraft-sea-498/

PS Actually I can’t see why there should be an apology anyway. It appears the plane was shot down over syrian territorial waters, so it’s a textbook case of intrusion. What is there to apologise for?