Welcome step of Turkey recovers body of pilot from downed Russian fighter jet

Turkey has initiated the process to hand over the body of a Russian pilot to Moscow after his jet was shot down by Turkey, a day before a United Nations climate conference starts in Paris that could bring a “saddened” Turkish president and his Russian counterpart together. 

In a press briefing held at Ankara’s airport prior to his departure for a EU-Turkey Summit in Brussels on Nov. 29, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said the body of Russian pilot Oleg Peshkov, who died after his plane was downed by Turkish F-16s on Nov. 24 when it reportedly breached Turkish airspace for 17 seconds, had been taken by Turkey and would be sent to Russia on its request.

“The Russian pilot, who lost his life during the airspace violation was delivered to our border yesterday night at 1:45 a.m.,” said Davutoğlu, adding that Orthodox clerics in the southern province of Hatay had performed funeral rites over the pilot’s body. 

“The body will be handed to Russia on their request after our initiatives,” he added. 

Peshkov was reportedly killed by Turkmen forces as he descended to ground in a parachute.

The other pilot in the downed Russian warplane, Konstantin Murakhtin, was rescued by Syrian special forces units and brought to a Russian base in Syria after the incident.

The coffin of Peshkov was flown to Ankara, where, according to Russia’s RIA news agency, it was met at an airfield by Moscow’s ambassador and military attaché, Reuters reported. 

Erdoğan ‘saddened’ by incident

A day before, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan repeated his call to Russian President Vladimir Putin for a face-to-face meeting in Paris on the sidelines of the U.N. Global Climate Summit to discuss and resolve an ongoing bilateral crisis, saying Turkey was sorry about the incident. 

 “We feel really saddened about this incident. We would not like such a thing to happen … but unfortunately it did. I hope such a thing will not happen again,” Erdoğan said Nov. 28 in a statement during a visit to the northwestern province of Balıkesir.

“What we tell Russia is, ‘Let’s talk about this issue within its boundaries and let’s settle it. Let’s not make others happy by hurting our entire relationship. I think the U.N. Global Climate Change Summit to be held in Paris on Monday could be an opportunity to restore our relations,” he said. 

This was Erdoğan’s second call to Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet in Paris after the downing of the Russian jet. 

Initially, Erdoğan had expressed his willingness to meet Putin on Nov. 27 in the northern province of Bayburt. An aide to Putin, however, said the Russian president refused to contact Erdoğan because Ankara does not want to apologize.

“We see Turkey’s unwillingness to simply apologize for the incident with the plane,” Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s aide, told reporters when asked why Putin had refused to talk with Erdoğan. 

On the same day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also confirmed that the Turkish president had requested a meeting with Putin in Paris on Nov. 30. 

“A proposal from the Turkish side about a meeting at the level of heads of state has been delivered to the president,” Reuters reported Peskov as saying in a conference call.  “That’s all I can say,” Peskov added.

Russian Army in Syria battle ground : War against ISIS

Latest,  we know about ISIS activity, this terror group very quickly spread in Syria, Afganistan, Turki and many others asian region. According to NBC news reporter Israel said on Sunday that an Arab citizen had used a para-glider to fly illegally into neighboring Syria, where he planned to join Islamic State insurgents in the four-year-old rebellion against Syria President Bashar al-Assad.

The man's flight on Saturday across the fortified Golan Heights frontier jarred Israel, which has seen dozens of its minority Muslim Arabs or Palestinians from East Jerusalem reach the Syrian civil war through legal destinations such as Turkey.

The Israeli military, whose aircraft dropped illumination flares around the Golan overnight before calling off the searches on Sunday, issued brief statements describing the paraglider as an Arab from the predominantly Muslim town of Jaljulia. He was not named. Israeli media gave his age as 23.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the man's citizenship would be revoked as part of a wider policy against militants.

A minister from Netanyahu's rightist Likud party, Ofir Akunis, told reporters that the Israeli Arab had "crossed to the border into Syria ... to join ISIS forces".  

According to CIA" The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency said, that the number of foreign fighters who went to Syria and Iraq to fight with the ISIS has reached more than 30,000 fighters.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), according to the “New York Times,” announced that: “About 30,000 terrorists have went to Syria and Iraq since 2011,” noting that, “The number of terrorists who hold U.S. citizenship amounted to 250 fighters.”

According to intelligence reports, the foreign fighters are belonging to more than 100 countries. India, Pakistan, Afganistan, United States, Britain and some arab Country.

According to Iraqi News"  More than 10,000 ISIS fighters have been killed since the U.S.-led international coalition started its air campaign against the militant group in Iraq and Syria nine months ago, according to the U.S. deputy secretary of state, Antony Blinken.

Speaking after a number of leaders from more than 20 countries met in Paris for discussions on how to fight the ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria, Blinken pointed out that there had been a great deal of progress but the militant group remained resilient and capable of taking the initiative.

“We have seen a lot of losses within Daesh [Isis] since the start of this campaign, more than 10,000,” Blinken told France Inter radio on Wednesday. “It will end up having an impact.”

“We have conceived a three-year plan and we’re nine months into it,” he said. 

I follow events almost minute to minute but find it difficult to make strategic sense out of many of them. It’s why I pity the layman observer who gets his morning dose of news and cannot reflect deep enough on them. I have no doubt that West Asia continues to occupy the core center of strategic affairs in the world and competing centres in Central Asia and the South China Sea are yet many light years behind. Rebalancing is fine as a concept and the US may keep trying to dilute the significance of the region by simply trying to ignore it but as things stand its attention will not wane. A review of the situation after the unexpected entry of Russia into the war zone is necessary to make any sense of what is happening.

The Russians came in for a variety of reasons. It may be good for clarity to be military like in bulleting these.

Firstly, Russia believes that the West was just not serious about defeating the ISIS. The US and its allies prefer a policy of drift allowing the emasculation of Bashir Assad and then effecting regime change. The larger picture of victory of the so called moderates without a simultaneous victory of the ISIS against Assad is their hope and aim which is unachievable. Besides what the eventual color of the moderates, who are supported by non ISIS groups such as Al Nusra and Al Qaida, will be is unpredictable.

Third, the lack of focused action would give scope to ISIS to expand its activities to Afghanistan and thence to Central Asia. With the situation in Af-Pak none too certain the ISIS is bound to take advantage of the turbulence. Its move into Central Asia will have severely negative effects on Russia’s near abroad region.

Fourth, the only Russian military facility yet intact in West Asia is the port city of Latakia in Syria and its hold over that for the sake of control of the West Mediterranean is essential. The fighting was getting dangerously close to this facility and therefore ‘depth’ had to be afforded to it to keep it from harm’s way. Bashir Assad’s defeat and fall would have meant the end of Russian military presence.

Fifth, Putin probably believed that after Ukraine where he had scored diplomatically this was the opportunity to demonstrate the resurgence of Russia. During 2008 when it had conducted operations in Ossetia the West had reported the pathetic state of equipment and weaponry of the Russian Army. It was important to break the perception that Russia was militarily regressing and weak.