Russia And Turkey Can't Afford To Be Enemies

A Russian fighter bomber shot down by a NATO member. Its crew believed to be dead and their bodies held by rebels backed by Western allies.

This is such a recipe for war that it won't be allowed to happen.

Not, that is, if sense prevails in a region where no sense has prevailed for too long.

A landscape in which enemies find themselves on the same side - and friends stab each other in the back.

Russia insists its Su-24 "Fencer" was shot down in Syrian airspace where it was conducting raids against "terrorists".

Turkey says the warplane was downed by its F16 fighters after ignoring demands to leave its airspace and 10 warnings given over five minutes.

It followed demands from the Turks made the previous day that Russia stop bombing militia from the Turkman Syrian minority who are part of a broad-based alliance fighting the regime of Bashar al Assad.

Video images have been released showing the air crew dead or badly injured - and in the hands of the Free Syrian Army.

This is an organisation that is backed, funded, trained and sometimes armed by Turkey, the United States and Britain.

Russia will surely seek retribution, especially if it ever emerges that the pilot and navigator parachuted to earth alive and were then murdered.

The Kremlin has been trying to forge a formal alliance to fight so-called Islamic State and all other rebel groups with the American-led coalition already bombing IS.

Over the last week the two blocs have stepped up their attacks on IS infrastructure targeting its oil industry which generated $2m (£1.3m) a day to fund the death cult.

But Russia has also been bombing NATO's rebel Syrian allies in the west of the country while Washington remains bitterly opposed to Vladimir Putin's campaign to keep the Damascus regime in place.

Mr Putin has called the downing of the jet a "stab in the back".

But Turkey has been arguing for a no-fly zone over all of the country to keep Mr Assad's aircraft out of the skies and repeatedly warned Moscow that it risked losing aircraft if they continued to violate its airspace.

Mr Putin may be wrong about Turkey's back stabbing here.

But he'd be forgiven for stating what is obvious to supporters of the Kurds if he was to argue that Ankara is stabbing the coalition in the back in the east of Syria and in northern Iraq.

Kurds from the armed wing of the Kurdish Workers’ Party are in the forefront of an operation that has brought them within sight, if not range of Raqqa, the IS 'capital'.

Alongside Kurds from Iraq and some Arab volunteers backed by the West, they have proven to be the only reliable force fighting for the coalition on the ground against IS.

But back in their rear areas they are being shelled and bombed by Turkey.

Simply put, a NATO member is bombing NATO allies who are fighting Islamic State with close air support from (among others) NATO partners.

Proving a point that in the Middle East an enemy’s enemy is not always a friend.

But neither Turkey nor Russia can afford an escalation of the incident on the border.

That would extend the conflict beyond the borders of Syria and Iraq.

They may not be friends but they can't afford to become enemies.