{"id":203203,"date":"2015-11-25T05:53:17","date_gmt":"2015-11-25T05:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/turkey-provokes-russia-with-shoot-down\/"},"modified":"2015-11-25T05:53:17","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T05:53:17","slug":"turkey-provokes-russia-with-shoot-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/turkey-provokes-russia-with-shoot-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey Provokes Russia with Shoot-down"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"247.089306698\">\n<p><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong> Turkey appears to have deliberately\u00a0shot down a Russian warplane as a provocation designed to escalate tensions between NATO and Russia, a ploy that seems to have sucked in\u00a0President Obama\u00a0as he tries to look tough against Russia to appease his neocon critics, writes Robert Parry.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-16430\"\/>By Robert Parry<\/p>\n<p>President Barack Obama \u2014 always sensitive to neocon criticism that he\u2019s \u201cweak\u201d \u2014 continues to edge the world closer to\u00a0a nuclear confrontation with Russia as he talks tough and tolerates more provocations against Moscow, now including Turkey\u2019s intentional shoot-down of a Russian warplane along the Turkish-Syrian border.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than rebuke Turkey, a NATO member, for its reckless behavior \u2014 or express sympathy to the Russians \u2014 Obama instead <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/2015\/11\/24\/remarks-president-obama-and-president-hollande-france-joint-press\"><u>asserted<\/u><\/a> that \u201cTurkey, like every country, has a right to defend its territory and its airspace.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_13377\" style=\"width: 274px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" readability=\"32\"><a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/1448430797_101754_recep_tayyip_erdogan_dogum_yeri.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13377\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif?92867d\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/1448430797_101754_recep_tayyip_erdogan_dogum_yeri.jpg\" alt=\"Turkish President Recep Erdogan.\" width=\"264\" height=\"204\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13377\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/1448430797_101754_recep_tayyip_erdogan_dogum_yeri.jpg\" alt=\"Turkish President Recep Erdogan.\" width=\"264\" height=\"204\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turkish President Recep Erdogan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>It was\u00a0another one of Obama\u2019s breathtaking moments of hypocrisy, since\u00a0he has repeatedly violated the territorial integrity of various countries, including in Syria where he has authorized bombing without the government\u2019s permission and has armed rebels\u00a0fighting to overthrow Syria\u2019s secular regime.<\/p>\n<p>Obama\u2019s comment on Turkey\u2019s right to shoot down planes \u2013 made\u00a0during a joint press conference with French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday \u2013 was jarring, too, because there was no suggestion that even if the SU-24 jetfighter had strayed briefly into Turkish territory, which the Russians deny, that it was threatening Turkish targets.<\/p>\n<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin angrily called the Turkish attack a \u201cstab in the back delivered by the accomplices of terrorists.\u201d He warned of \u201cserious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Further provoking the Russians, Turkish-backed Syrian rebels then killed the two Russian pilots by riddling their bodies with bullets after they parachuted from the doomed plane and were floating toward the ground. Another Russian soldier was killed when a U.S.-supplied TOW missile brought down a Russian helicopter on a search-and-rescue mission, according to reports.<\/p>\n<p>But Obama, during the news conference, seemed more&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/11\/24\/turkey-provokes-russia-with-shoot-down\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive: Turkey appears to have deliberately\u00a0shot down a Russian warplane as a provocation designed to escalate tensions between NATO and Russia, a ploy that seems to have sucked in\u00a0President Obama\u00a0as he tries to look tough against Russia to appease his neocon critics, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry President Barack Obama \u2014 always sensitive to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-203203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}