The Turkish General Staff denied a news report which appeared on The Wall Street Journal that a Turkish military plane which was shot down by Syria last week on Friday was hit in Syrian airspace.
A statement from the Turkish General Staff which was issued yesterday said radar tracking data and radio communication records had shown that the Turkish RF4 reconnaissance plane was downed by Syria in international airspace after the plane violated Syrian airspace briefly for nearly five minutes and quickly left.
The statement said the plane was flying solo and unarmed with all identification systems switched-on, and it was testing Turkish radar capabilities in the region.
According to the results of an administrative probe and radar tracks, our jet was shot down 13 nautical miles off of Syria, one nautical mile outside Syria’s 12-nautical mile territorial waters, and crashed 16 kilometers (8.5 nautical miles) off the Syrian coastline after losing altitude and speed,†the statement added.