Turkey shoots down Russian jet

[Pete Dero]

Just found this in the mailbox :


Raxco Software - 25% Off Everything - No Exclusions! Coupon: TURKEY - Shop Software:

25% off all software for your Windows PC and household PCs with coupon code: TURKEY


Took me a minute to realise it is Thanksgiving in the US and Raxco wasn't making a political statement ...

[bayonetbrant]

haha

[Staggerwing]

Something similar must explain all the banner ads for Uggs that keep popping up during my web browsing.

[undercovergeek]

Something similar must explain all the banner ads for Uggs that keep popping up during my web browsing.

Tooncespam

[MetalDog]

If Erdogan wants to roll into Syria and Iraq in order to re-establish Ottoman rule, more power to him.  But he might also want Greece, and that's a big 'no-no'.

I think it's not a good idea to let them rekindle the Ottoman empire. 

I think it would lead to an ethnic cleansing of the Kurds.  I imagine there would be something similar for any of the other peoples that the Ottomans would rather not be included in their country.

[Centurion40]

I appreciate the concerns, but don't share them. If the Turks were up for another round of genocide, then why wait?  A large portion of eastern Turkey is already predominantly Kurdish (darkish blue area on the map), so what is keeping the Turks from wholesale murder now?  The exact same things that will keep from genocide in the future.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Turkey

The Ottoman Empire was not a cultural, ethnic or religious monolith. Ethnically there were Turks, Arabs, Jews, Kurds, Greeks, Persians, and various other sorts of Europeans; religiously there were Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, Catholic Christians, Orthodox Christians, Coptic Christians, Jews, Druze, etc., etc.  Yeah some groups were persecuted from time to time; the Armenians and Kurds are outstanding horrors.  But between 1300 A.D. and the 1920s lots of ethnicities and religions have been persecuted throughout the entire world.

What I am ultimately saying is that I don't think that a 21st century Ottoman nation would inherently behave like the 19th century Ottoman nation, anymore than the 21st century British nation behaves like 19th century British nation.

[Bison]

Turkey has been targeting and killing Kurds for years.

[Centurion40]

Turkey has been targeting and killing Kurds for years.

Centuries.

[Bison]

Turkey has been targeting and killing Kurds for years.

Centuries.

I know, but I'm specifically referring to the modern Turkish state.   It's a mess of ethnic tensions.

[Centurion40]

I guess that my ultimate point is that the whole region is FUBAR.  1000% FUBAR.  There is no sanitary answer.  Unresolved hatred goes back millennia. But what would be the best end-game for us (North America and Europe)?  My current thinking is that disengagement from the Middle East and developing alternatives to oil could offer the best rewards with the least blow-back.  A friendly totalitarian state, or at least a non-belligerent totalitarian state covering as much of the Middle East as possible could also offer a best case scenario for us.  Will some religious or ethnic group over there get fucked over?  Yes.  But some group is going to get fucked over no matter what is done, or not done.  It is simply the nature of that beast.

[Staggerwing]

I still say "Arm the Kurds to the teeth." Set up a pipeline of weapons that can be shut off at once if they start misbehaving in any way close to what other players in the area are doing. I think they are looking to follow the Israeli model and that brings up another good point. Make it clear that we expect great things from them as a friend. Our friends can be their friends and we also have a friend with a Mediterranean view. I know The Kurds are no angels but they have been practically begging to be taken under our wing for nearly a quarter century.

[bayonetbrant]

This isn't mine.  I stole it from someone who probably stole it from someone who borrowed it from someone else.

Lt. General Tom McInerney is an expert on handling threats from fighter jets.
McInerney served as:
Commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) – the military agency responsible for protecting the United States and Canada from foreign jet attacks – for the Alaska region
Commander of the Alaskan Air Command
Commander of 11th Air Force in Alaska
Commander of the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing, Clark Air Base, Philippines
Commander of the 313th Air Division, Kadena Air Base, Japan
Commander of 3rd Air Force, Royal Air Force Station Mildenhall, England
Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force
A command pilot with more than 4,100 flying hours, including 407 combat missions
In his role as Norad commander for Alaska, McInerney dealt with more Russian fighter jet incursions (which he calls "bear penetrations") than anyone else in the world.
So McInerney knows how to tell innocent from hostile incursions by foreign fighter jets, standard rules of engagement of foreign fighter jets, how to read radar tracks, and the other things he would need to know to form an informed opinion about the shootdown of a foreign jet.
Yesterday, McInerney told Fox News – much to the surprise of the reporter interviewing him – that assuming the Turkish version of the flight path of the Russian jet is accurate, Russia wasn't threatening Turkey, and that Turkey's shoot down of the Russian jet "had to be pre-planned", as the jet wasn't in Turkish air space long enough for anything other than a premeditated attack to have brought it down

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4630118119001/radar-track-shows-russia-jets-path-over-turkish-territory/?#sp=show-clips

[Staggerwing]

Is there any possibility that the Turks thought up until the shoot down that they were confronting one of Assad's 20-odd Fencers? If not, and the Turks knew that they were dealing with a Russian AC then one has to wonder if there are wheels within wheels inside the Turkish Gov't. These 'wheels may be much less concerned about the loss of some Russian tourist money and much more interested in poking the Russians in the eye for getting a little too involved in what the 'Wheels' see as their rightful zone of influence.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

This isn't mine.  I stole it from someone who probably stole it from someone who borrowed it from someone else.

Lt. General Tom McInerney is an expert on handling threats from fighter jets.
McInerney served as:
Commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) – the military agency responsible for protecting the United States and Canada from foreign jet attacks – for the Alaska region
Commander of the Alaskan Air Command
Commander of 11th Air Force in Alaska
Commander of the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing, Clark Air Base, Philippines
Commander of the 313th Air Division, Kadena Air Base, Japan
Commander of 3rd Air Force, Royal Air Force Station Mildenhall, England
Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force
A command pilot with more than 4,100 flying hours, including 407 combat missions
In his role as Norad commander for Alaska, McInerney dealt with more Russian fighter jet incursions (which he calls "bear penetrations") than anyone else in the world.
So McInerney knows how to tell innocent from hostile incursions by foreign fighter jets, standard rules of engagement of foreign fighter jets, how to read radar tracks, and the other things he would need to know to form an informed opinion about the shootdown of a foreign jet.
Yesterday, McInerney told Fox News – much to the surprise of the reporter interviewing him – that assuming the Turkish version of the flight path of the Russian jet is accurate, Russia wasn't threatening Turkey, and that Turkey's shoot down of the Russian jet "had to be pre-planned", as the jet wasn't in Turkish air space long enough for anything other than a premeditated attack to have brought it down

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4630118119001/radar-track-shows-russia-jets-path-over-turkish-territory/?#sp=show-clips

I'll buy that. The premeditation is from prior incursions.

Is a shoot down overkill? Probably. An escort out would have been better. Still, there is no excuse for Russia trying to play the heavy everywhere. Even when Putin went to Australia for G8 or whatever, he had his navy trying to intimidate. WTF? You can't play bully forever without the expectation somebody will break you nose.

[Bison]

Yeah I've read the pre-meditated confrontation in a few articles now.  It makes some scary sense.