Recep Tayyip Erdoan has charged Republican Peoples Party (CHP) of failing to show a nationalist position on the shooting

down of a Turkish jet by Syria last month, charging the CHP of behaving like a voice for the Syrian Baath regime. Bashar al-Assad isnt talking of our [shot down] jet as Kemal Kldarolu is already speaking on his behalf. The CHP has evidently taken in charge of the function of voice for the Baath regime in Turkey. The CHP leader didnt show a nationalistic position on our shot down jet, Erdoan told on Wednesday on his partys expanded provincial chairmen meeting. Erdoan also criticised Kldarolu for believing a report by The Wall Street Journal that declared that the Turkish jet had been shot down by Syrian forces in Syrian territorial waters. Youll, on the one hand, slander the Justice and Development Party AK Party by charging it of executing some foreign countries policies and, then again, youll sound loudly the untruthful statement of an American newspaper. What are you chasing after? Kldarolu is motivating Turkeys enemies, Erdoan carried on. The prime minister also charged some Turkish media outlets of going with the Syrian regime as loyally as pro-regime news outlets in Syria do. Syrian forces downed an RF-4E Phantom, an disarmed reconnaissance mission version of the F-4 fighter jet, on June 22, when, in accordance with Ankara, it was on a unaccompanied mission to test

domestic radar systems. Turkey states the plane was hit in international airspace by Syria without word of advice in a unfriendly act. Syria, on the other hand, says the plane was flying fast and low, at an height of a hundred meters, and that it was only a kilometer off the Syrian coast when it was downed. Syria also states the plane was hit by antiaircraft gun weapon system that only have a range of about two-and-a-half kilometers, rather than by a projectile. The Wall Street Journals report, which quoted US and Pentagon officials, laid claim that the Turkish jet downed by Syrian forces on June 22 was shot down in Syrian air space and not in international air space, as the Turkish government asserts. Erdoan repeated in his speech that the Turkish aircraft was hit thirteen miles away the Syrian coast, a mile beyond the countrys national air space. The plane lost height and speed after it was hit and strayed into the Syrian airspace, crashing into the water 8.5 miles away the Syrian coast, he added. Remarking on the disputation as to how the plane was downed, Erdoan told it would become clear whether it was downed by a projectile or antiaircraft fire after the wreckage of the plane, found last week in the seabed, was completely retrieved and analysed.

www.turkeytribune.com