Turkey has called for an extraordinary NATO meeting over the downing of its warplane by Syria, state television reported on Sunday.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in an interview with TRT state television Turkey as a NATO member country had requested consultations under article 4 of NATO’s founding treaty to inform the alliance of the incident with its warplane shot down by Syria’s air defense forces.
Davutoglu has accused Syria of shooting down the warplane in international airspace.
The Turkish reconnaissance plane “was performing a test and training flight to control the operation of the national radar and its flight was not aimed against Syria,” the minister said.
The plane was shot down in international air space and fell in Syria’s territorial waters, he said.
The RF-4E reconnaissance aircraft disappeared over the Mediterranean, near the Syrian coast, at about 09:00 GMT on Friday. The search for the two pilots of the downed jet has not yet yielded any results.
Syria has claimed it shot down the Turkish warplane over its territorial waters after it intruded into its airspace. The Syrian Foreign Ministry has said this was not an act of aggression against Turkey but defense of the country’s sovereignty.
