By shooting down a Russian military aircraft on the pretext of protecting its sovereignty and airspace, Turkey’s latest bout of hawkish and unnecessary muscle flexing is threatening to undo a cautiously developing international consensus about dealing with the Islamic State (IS) in the wake of the Paris attacks. The basic facts about this latest twist in the sordid saga of Syria’s endless chaos are predictably murky and heavily contested. The only thing agreed upon by all parties is that the Russian Su-24, an all-weather attack aircraft carrying a crew of two, was shot down by two Turkish F-16s around the Turkish-Syria border on the morning of November 24 and the plane crashed in the mountains of the province Latakia in a region contested by the Syrian government and rebel forces comprising of ethnic Turkmen fighters. This militia was funded and trained by NATO to combat the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The two pilots of the plane ejected upon being hit and were subsequently shot at by the Turkmen militia. The shooting killed one of the pilots while the second one has been rescued after a 12 hour military operation conducted by a coalition of Russian and Syrian forces, in which another Russian soldier lost his life. This was the first Russian plane to be targeted since Russia began its aerial campaign of bombarding all rebel forces who have taken up arms against the al-Assad regime, of which Russia has been a staunch long-time ally. The Russian campaign has since its beginning attracted hollow criticism from the western powers whose inaction and ill-advised arming of a mishmash of so-called ‘moderate’ Islamist proxies to take down al-Assad are in fact directly responsible for the quagmire in Syria. The west wants Russia to exclusively target IS, whereas Russia sees all rebel forces as fundamentally terroristic and a cause of instability in the region. For Turkey then, the Russian bombardment of camps of its own proxies, the aforementioned Turkmen, has always been a prickly matter and thus it can be safely presumed that the Turkish government was itching for a reason to strike a blow against Russia and it found the pretence to do so in this alleged instance of a violation of Turkish airspace. The Russian version of events vehemently denies that its plane crossed into Turkish airspace and maintains that the plane was hit one kilometre inside the Syrian border and posed no threat to Turkey. A demonstrably angry Vladimir Putin has called the shooting down of the plane a “stab in the back by accomplices of terrorists” and has warned of “significant consequences”. Even the Turkish version of events, while contradicting the Russian narrative, does not shake the sense that this was a deliberate ‘provocation’ by the Turkish forces since the radar image released by them — along with a leaked letter to the UN — reveal that the plane only traversed inside Turkish borders for a short window of 17 seconds and was actually shot down after it was safely back inside Syrian airspace. This scandalous revelation is enough to throw out any suggestions of Turkey merely protecting its territorial integrity. Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was less coy about Turkey’s paternalistic protection of the Turkmen militia as he openly stated that Russian attacks on Turkmen were not justified under the guise of combating the terrorism of the IS and that he had himself ordered the Turkish general chief of staff to shoot down any plane approaching Turkish borders.The veritable mess that Syria has become is host to multiple sovereign actors as the country has become a playfield for various, incompatible power plays. With so many vested interests and agendas at work, the situation on the ground is like a powder keg waiting to go off and such an incident of a direct engagement between a NATO member and Russia was always feared. Once again, the competing future plans for Syria held by external powers are to blame, with the fate of Bashar al-Assad being the major point of contention. However, squabbles of this nature serve only to benefit the IS, as it has plentifully gained from a distinct lack of a coordinated global response against itself in the past. The NATO members should by now recognise that they are playing second fiddle to Russia in combating the myriad of terrorist organisations in Syria and parroting the line against al-Assad only breathes more life into the ceaseless Syrian turmoil. It is therefore the responsibility of NATO to check Turkey’s dangerous ambiguity towards the IS and mediate between the two duelling countries to prevent this friction from turning into a counterproductive escalation of hostilities. *