Turkey's attack provocation to split int’l anti-terrorist coalition — French politician

PARIS, November 24. /TASS/. Turkey’s attack on a Russian warplane in Syria is an obvious provocation seeking to set the international anti-Islamic State coalition at odds, Jean-Luc Melenchon, a French politician and member of the European Parliament, said on Tuesday.

"The Turkish government is playing really foul games," he wrote in his account in the web. "What was the Russian plane doing? It was delivering air strikes against the Islamic State. Did it pose any threat to Turkey? No. It means that it was another Turkey’s provocation seeking to set the international coalition which is currently being formed at odds. It is a well-staged shot in the back."

A Russian Su-24 frontline bomber was downed by an air-to-air missile launched from a Turkish F-16 fighter jet when it was returning from an anti-terrorist mission to the Hmeymim airbase in Syria. The warplane was at an altitude of 6,000 meters at a distance on one kilometer from the Turkish border. The Defense Ministry said earlier that pilots had managed to eject from the aircraft. Their whereabouts were being established.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the downed Su-24 was no threat to Turkey as it was on a mission to bomb Islamic State targets. "It was a stab in the back," Putin said. The Russian president warned that attack on the Russian warplane would have "serious consequences" for the Russian-Turkish relations.