Turkey scrambled fighters to force a Syrian passenger plane to land on Wednesday, suspecting it of carrying military equipment from Moscow, while Turkey's military chief warned of a more forceful response if shelling continued to spill over the border.
Military jets escorted the Damascus-bound Airbus A320, carrying around 30 passengers, into the airport in Ankara hours after Turkey's chief of staff said his troops would respond with greater force if bombardments from Syria kept hitting Turkish territory, Turkish state-run television said.
"We are determined to control weapons transfers to a regime that carries out such brutal massacres against civilians. It is unacceptable that such a transfer is made using our airspace," Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.
"Today we received information this plane was carrying cargo of a nature that could not possibly be in compliance with the rules of civil aviation," he said in Athens during an official visit, in comments broadcast live on Turkish television.
Davutoglu said Turkey was within its rights to investigate planes suspected to be carrying military materials and that the plane would be allowed to continue if it was found to be clean. He declined to comment on what the banned materials might be.
He said Turkey would continue to investigate Syrian civilian aircraft using its airspace.
He also said Syrian airspace was no longer safe and that Turkish passenger planes should not fly there. A witness at the border saw at least one passenger plane turn around as it approached Syria and head back into Turkey on Wednesday.
"Once a week a Syrian Airlines plane flies from Moscow bound for Damascus," Interfax reported Vnukovo Airport spokeswoman Yelena Krylova as saying. "The plane took off normally, there were no incidents."
Interfax cited her as saying 25 people were on board and that it was a charter plane. It was supposed to depart at 15:06, but left 20 minutes late.
