Damascus apologizes for downing Turkish military F-4 plane: Erdogan
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Syria had admitted it shot down a Turkish warplane in the Mediterranean and that Damascus had apologized.
The two pilots of the Turkish F-4 fighter jet are alive, Erdogan had earlier said, before holding a press conference in Ankara.
At this moment the air force and navy are conducting search and rescue operations in the western Mediterranean and luckily our pilots are alive, we have just lost a plane, he told journalists while travelling back from Brazil.
Earlier, the Turkish army said it lost radar and radio contact with one of its aircrafts on the Mediterranean near neighboring Syria, and a television station said it had crashed in Syrian territorial waters.
But Lebanons Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar television station said that Syrian air defenses shot down the Turkish military aircraft, quoting Syrian security sources.
Syrian security sources confirmed to a Manar correspondent in Damascus that Syrian defense forces shot down the Turkish fighter jet, the Hezbollah-owned channel said.
Turkey, which had drawn close to Syria before the uprising against Assad, became one of the Syrian leaders fiercest critics when he responded violently to pro-democracy protests inspired by popular upheavals elsewhere in the Arab world.
Ankara has previously floated the possibility of setting up some kind of safe haven or humanitarian corridor inside Syria, which would entail military intervention, but has said it would undertake no such action without U.N. Security Council approval.
Turkey said it had lost contact with one of its military aircraft off its southeastern coast, and a television station said it had crashed in Syrian territorial waters.
The plane took off from Malatya airbase in the southeast at 0730 GMT and lost communication with the base at 0858 GMT in the southwest of the Hatay province bordering Syria, the military command said in a statement posted online.
Search and rescue efforts have started immediately, it said.
CNN Turk television said Turkey was in contact with the Syrian authorities to get permission to conduct a search for the airmen, although there was no immediate official confirmation.
The Turkish government called an emergency security meeting when the military plane went missing near Syria.
Erdogan and top military and intelligence chiefs are set to attend the meeting to discuss the fate of the plane, Anatolia news agency reported.
The Hurriyet daily newspaper reported that the plane had gone down in international waters and that the two airmen had been found alive and well following a search operation by Turkish forces.
The Chief of General Staff declined to comment further on the incident beyond the written statement.
Turkish warplanes regularly patrol along and off Turkey's southern Mediterranean coast.
Pro-Iranian Al-Mayadeen television station, which is based in Lebanon, quoted what it said were Turkish sources as saying a jet had been shot down by Syrian air defenses near the border with Turkey. There was no confirmation of that report.