Turkey downs two Syrian fighter jets as it intensifies Idlib attacks
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Turkey has escalated a widespread offensive against Syrian troops and their allies, shooting down two government planes, wiping out dozens of pieces of military hardware including tanks and radar systems, and stalling a regime momentum that had been rampaging through Idlib province.
The attacks came in response to the killing of at least 33 troops in an airstrike in northern Syria on Thursday night and marked one of the most sustained direct clashes between regional militaries in decades.
The Syrian military had not previously lost more than one jet fighter on a single day throughout the eight-year war, which had been mainly fought through a myriad of proxies. A Turkish F-16 shot both planes down after Turkey lost a drone to Syrian fire. The downing of the jets was acknowledged by both sides and made light of regime claims that it would defend its airspace over the north of the country – a role taken over by Russia in the past four years, whose forces Ankara has avoided over the past three days.
Instead, Turkish drones and artillery pieces have killed at least 106 Syrian soldiers and dozens more allied militiamen, including 14 members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and at least 21 Afghan and Pakistani Shias who had been sent to Idlib by Iran.
Syrian rebel groups and diplomats in the region say Russia was responsible for the lethal airstrike on Turkish forces, a fact that they say Ankara privately recognises. Turkey’s public wrath, however, has been squarely directed at forces fighting on behalf of Bashar al-Assad, exposing the limitations of a fatigued military and its ageing hardware that has proved little match for Turkey’s modern weaponry.
“We have neither the intention nor the idea to face Russia,” said the Turkish defence minister, Hulusi Akar. “Our only intention there is for the regime to end the massacre and thereby stop radicalisation and migration.”
Russia has been reluctant to defend Syrian interests over the past 72 hours, a posture diplomats suggest is partly aimed at avoiding further inflaming Ankara while also keeping the regime in check.
