Syria’s Assad regrets downing Turkish jet

PanARMENIAN.Net - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has told a Turkish newspaper he wished Syrian forces had not shot down a Turkish jet last month and that he would not allow the tensions between the two countries to turn into open combat, according to Today’s Zaman.

“We learned that it [the plane] belonged to Turkey after shooting it down. I say 100 percent ‘if only we had not shot it down',” the Cumhuriyet newspaper quoted Assad as saying in an interview published on Tuesday, July 3.

“We are in a state of war, so every unidentified plane is an enemy plane,” the paper quoted Assad as saying. “Let me state it again: We did not have the slightest idea about its identity when we shot it down.”

Turkey, however, has insisted that the plane's electronic signals, which indicate if an aircraft is friend or foe, were activated during the entire flight and that Turkey even intercepted radio conversations in which Syrian forces referred to the plane.

His comments emerged as fighting raged throughout Syria to unseat Assad in what is increasingly taking on the character of an all-out civil war, fuelled by sectarian hatred. Syrian helicopters bombarded a Damascus suburb on Monday and Turkey scrambled warplanes near the border in the north, as the U.N. human rights chief warned that arms supplies to both the government and rebels were deepening the 16-month conflict.

Asked whether the tensions between Syria and Turkey could lead to war, Assad said: “We will not allow [the tensions] to turn into open combat between the two countries, which would harm them both.”