Turkish Military renounce missile claim: No missile trace on the downed jet

Here’s a simple rendering of the disputed accounts of what the Turks call Syria’s “violation of international law” when a Turkish fighter jet was shot down in late June.

Syria: We hit the Turkish plane at close range using a simple anti-aircraft battery that has a range of less than 2km. It all happened so fast, we only found out afterwards that the plane was Turkish. We gave Turkey a piece of the tail fin with bullet holes in it, to prove that’s what happened.

Turkey: The plane was 13 miles (21km) offshore in international airspace when it was hit. So the Syrians must have used a missile, and therefore radar and command channels were involved. The Syrians knew it was a Turkish plane, and we have the evidence to prove it.

Except that, as more information seeps out of the Turkish camp, it appears they still don’t have the proof.

In a statement on Monday, Turkish Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz said, “Among the pieces [of the F4] retrieved so far there have been no traces of a missile.”

And on Tuesday, General Ates Mehmet Irez gave the official Turkish Air Force presentation on the matter, saying: “There are no traces of a SAM [surface-to-air] missile. If it was a SAM, it would have definitely left a trace on our radar. However, there were no such traces on our radar.”

Turkey turns to NATO over downed jet
Then, intriguingly, he continued: “This plane cannot have been hit by a SAM missile. However, it could have been hit by a missile carried by a man [MANPAD]… it could have been hit from the deck of a Syrian ship sailing in those waters.”

Turkish experts, studying the photos of the plane wreckage lying on the Mediterranean seabed – released on the day of the pilots’ funerals – are saying that if it was a heat-seeking missile, it would have hit the engine – but the plane’s engine is intact. If it was a radar-guided missile, you would expect it to have hit the cockpit, but the cockpit is not destroyed.

Autopsy reports on the two dead pilots show no evidence of either a missile or a bullet, but only “trauma related to falling”.

In addition Chief of Staff Gen.Necdet Ozel said “Turkey will do “whatever great states do,”

Many questions including new boats and caps of dead pilots are still waiting to be responded by the Turkish authorities.