Sunday, March 23, 2014

Turkey downs Syrian Jet

(Syria) Turkey today shot down a Syrian Mig 23 jet claiming it did so after the Syrian Jet had violated its airspace. While I won't begrudge anybody shooting down a Syrian jet, there is actually more to this story than a simple trespass.

Turkeys under pressure Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has faced growing criticism from..well everybody. Be it the public sick of his Islamic autocratic rule, the police who have found out the hard way that in an Islamic state you can't arrest family members of the ruling party because it is against allah, , the Army who have found out that getting arrested on treason charges is as easy as saying..."Allah Ackba" or even how Turkey has clamped down on the internet.The latest incident to shake Erdogan is his self declared war against 'Twitter' which he has vowed to closed down. faced with so much anger aimed at him, Erdogan has had to pull a Rabbit out of his Fez.

So while at an election rally Erdogan came out with the following :

"A Syrian plane violated our airspace. Our F-16s took off and hit this plane. Why? because if you violate my airspace, our slap after this will be hard," 
Is that the language any prime minister should be using? Or is it simply nationalistic jingoism designed to take a lot of heat off the government? I'll go with the latter, seeing how only the otherday the Turks were bitching about how a Syrian Anti-aircraft battery had illuminated one of the jets. Anybody else find it strange that this just happened to transpire as the PM is on the election trail