ANKARA, November 25. /TASS/. Turkey’s General Staff has conducted one of the largest airspace control missions near the border with Syria, simultaneously engaging 18 F-16 fighter jets, the General Staff said in a statement released on Wednesday.
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The Turkish Armed Forces refrained from providing information what sections of the border had been patrolled.
In the meantime, the Anadolu news agency said that after the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 bomber was shot down, the military command redeployed 20 tanks to the Hatay province bordering Syria from the country’s western regions.
The news agency said that the tanks had been delivered by train to the city of Gaziantep and then transported by army trucks to the 5th Armoured Brigade.
Since the beginning of 2015, the Turkish General Staff has begun concentrating large army contingents to protect the border. Besides, ethnic Turkmen (or Syrian Turkoman) reside in Syria, to the south of Hatay province. Ankara voices its concern over the air strikes delivered by Russia’s Aerospace Force in that region.