Turkey scrambled fighters and briefly detained a Syrian passenger plane on Wednesday, suspecting it of carrying military equipment from Moscow, while Turkey’s military chief warned of a more forceful response if shelling continued to spill over the border.
Military jets escorted the Damascus-bound Airbus A-320, carrying around 30 passengers, into the airport in Ankara hours after Turkey’s chief of staff said his troops would respond with greater force if bombardments from Syria kept hitting Turkish territory, Turkish state-run television said.
“We are determined to control weapons transfers to a regime that carries out such brutal massacres against civilians. It is unacceptable that such a transfer is made using our airspace,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.
“Today we received information this plane was carrying cargo of a nature that could not possibly be in compliance with the rules of civil aviation,” he said in Athens during an official visit, in comments broadcast live on Turkish television.
The Turkish authorities had seized some of the cargo and the plane and its passengers would be allowed to continue their journey to Damascus, Davutoglu told reporters later, in televised remarks.
He said Turkey was within its rights to investigate planes suspected of carrying military materials but declined to say what was in the seized cargo.
Turkey would continue to investigate Syrian civilian aircraft using its airspace, Davutoglu said.