Syrian general, officers defect to Turkey as Damascus fires on second Turkish jet

Ankara convenes NATO meeting, says it has no intention of going to war • White House: US will work with Turks to hold Syria accountable

ANKARA (Reuters) – A Syrian general and 38 other soldiers defected to Turkey overnight, state television said on Monday.

Turkey said on Monday that Syrian forces had fired at a Turkish plane that was searching for an F-4 reconnaissance jet shot down by Syria last week, but the second plane was not brought down.

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told a news conference that Turkey would protect itself, within the framework of international law, against Syria’s “hostile action” of downing its warplane last week.

He said at the end of a sevenhour cabinet meeting on the incident that Syria’s downing of the jet would “not go unpunished.”

Turkey has convened a NATO meeting set for Tuesday to agree on a response to what it says was an attack without warning carried out over international airspace.

Friday’s attack lent a more menacing international dimension to the 16-month-old uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad. Britain said it could press for more serious action at the UN Security Council.

Syria argued that the downed Turkish aircraft was in Syrian airspace flying low and fast when it was attacked. It said it was not clear until after it was shot down that it was Turkish.

The EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg called for a calm response from Ankara, saying they would increase pressure on Assad. There seemed little appetite, however, for any military retaliation.

“Military intervention in Syria is out of the question,” Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said. “It is not a matter of consideration for the Dutch government. That is also at stake in the... context of NATO.”

The new defections from Assad’s armed forces could encourage those awaiting a disintegration of his army. But there has been little indication of any broader trend to desertion in the senior ranks of the armed forces, bound often to Assad by their Alawite background.

A Syrian general, two colonels, two majors, a lieutenant and their families – 199 people in total – crossed the border into Turkey overnight, CNN Turk said. Thirteen Syrian generals are now in Turkey, which is giving logistical support to the Free Syrian Army, though Ankara denies arming the rebels.

Turkish newspapers welcomed Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to invoke an article in the NATO alliance’s founding treaty providing for urgent consultations if a member considered its security interests threatened.

“Turkey has moved into action,” both the Milliyet and Vatan newspapers declared in headlines under the NATO flag. The liberal Radikal daily read: “No accident, an attack.”

The search for the aircraft and two missing air crew continued in the eastern Mediterranean, close to the maritime borders of both countries.

But analysts thought it unlikely that Turkey – even with the secondbiggest army in NATO, some half a million men under arms – would opt, at least for now, for military action against Syria. Ankara said on Monday it had no intention of going to war over the incident.

“I don’t think Turkey’s response will be a military one,” said Prof. Cagri Erhan of the political science faculty at Ankara University. “War is not one of the options. Turkey will act in line with measures taken within NATO.”

“I’m not of the opinion that Turkey will immediately respond militarily,” agreed Beril Dedeoglu of Galatasaray University. “But if there is another action, then there will certainly be a military response, there is no doubt.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the downing of the Turkish F-4 jet “brazen and unacceptable” and said Washington would cooperate closely with Ankara to promote a transition in Syria. The US also said on Monday it would work with NATO ally Turkey to hold Syria accountable for what US officials believe was a deliberate act.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the US stood in solidarity with Turkey as it determined its response, but sidestepped questions about what an appropriate response might be. “We will work with Turkey and other partners to hold the Assad regime accountable,” he told reporters on board Air Force One as US President Barack Obama flew to New Hampshire. “We are in close contact with Turkish officials as they investigate.”

Fierce fighting continued inside Syria, which has a 900-kilometer border with Turkey, with rebel fighters killing dozens of soldiers in the past few days as they fought against army attacks on towns and villages in central, north and eastern Syria, according to opposition sources.

A top UN human rights investigator has been holding talks in Damascus with senior Syrian officials to pave the way for a UN probe into widespread violations in the country, including recent massacres, UN and diplomatic sources said on Monday.

It was the first time that Brazilian expert Paulo Pinheiro was granted permission to enter Syria since his team was set up last September by the UN Human Rights Council.

“He is trying to pave the way for us to be able to go into the country,” a UN source told Reuters in Geneva. “We need to go before September when our final report is to be submitted.”

Meanwhile, Syrian tanks and artillery shelled the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, killing at least 20 people on Sunday in the second day of heavy bombardment in the country’s main oil-producing region, opposition activists said.

“Regime forces have dismantled their roadblocks from inside Deir alZor after incurring heavy losses from rebels. They have withdrawn from residential areas and are now shelling the city from the outskirts. The victims are mostly civilians,” a source at a hospital in Deir al-Zor told Reuters.

The official SANA news agency said “terrorists” abducted a state-appointed head of clerics in Deir al-Zor and blew up an oil pipeline passing through the province.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an opposition activists organization that monitors the crackdown on the 16-month revolt against Assad’s rule, said loyalist forces on Sunday killed another 70 people – mostly civilians and soldiers who had tried to defect. They had died elsewhere in the country in shelling, military raids and summary executions in the provinces of Homs, Hama, Idlib, Deraa and suburbs of Damascus.

The intensification of the fighting has raised Turkish fears of a flood of refugees and a slide into ethnic and religious warfare that could envelop the region. Ankara, like the West, is torn between a wish to remove Assad and the fear that any armed intervention could unleash uncontrollable forces.

While Turkish newspapers have railed against Assad, Erdogan, not always known for his emotional restraint, has eschewed bellicose rhetoric.

The prime minister, who bitterly turned against former ally Assad after he refused his advice to bow to demands for democratic reform, seemed to back away from any suggestion of an armed response.

If he sought some kind of retaliation from Tuesday’s NATO meeting, he could have invoked another article on mutual defense. That he did not, suggests the reaction will remain, at least for now, on the diplomatic stage.

The Foreign Ministry said Turkey knew where the wreckage of the F-4 Phantom jet lay, 1,300 meters under water, but had not yet found it. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the search continued for the two crew members.

He said the jet had been clearly marked as Turkish and dismissed Syria’s assertion it had not identified the aircraft, flying low and very fast, before opening fire.

Russia, which along with Iran, is Damascus’s chief ally, has provided most of Syria’s arms and has access to a deep water naval base in the country.

Davutoglu said he planned to present Turkey’s case to the UN Security Council, where Western powers are seeking, against Russian and Chinese opposition, to push through a motion that would allow stronger measures against Assad.

Moscow has made clear it would continue to veto such a move, which it fears could undermine its interests in Syria and wreak anarchy. That apparent inevitability strongly impacts the push for any stronger action by NATO. •