BRUSSELS, Belgium—The situation following the downing of a Russian jet by Turkey is very serious, NATO Secretary General told Rudaw Tuesday, urging all sides to remain prudent and prevent further escalation.
“I think I’ve expressed very clearly that we are calling for calm and de-escalation,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told Rudaw at a press conference. “This is a serious situation. This is a situation which calls on that we all are prudent and that we all contribute to de-escalating the situation.”
Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane on the Syrian border after it violated the Turkish airspace, said Ankara.
Turkish officials said the Russian jet was warned about the violation.
Stoltenberg said that his organization urges Ankara and Moscow to talk over the incident and make sure similar situation won’t happen again.
“There has been contacts and we would welcome even more contacts,” he explained. “To partly to solve this concrete incident, but also to continue to work on the development and also the strengthening of mechanisms to avoid these kinds of situation in the future.”
In response to a Rudaw question about NATO’s position, Stoltenberg said, “Actually, inside the Alliance we are discussing how we can develop better and improved measures for transparency, for predictability, and for risk reduction.”
He added: “Because we have to avoid this kind of incidents. We have to avoid that situations, incidents, accidents spiral out of control.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin described the shooting down of the jet as ‘a stab in the back’ by Turkey as he warned there would be ‘serious consequences’ in Moscow-Ankara relations.
Shortly after the incident Turkey called an emergency meeting of the NATO where Stoltenberg told reporters, “I have previously expressed my concerns about the implications of the military actions of the Russian Federation close to NATO’s borders,” he said.
“As we have repeatedly made clear, we stand in solidarity with Turkey and support the territorial integrity of our NATO Ally, Turkey,” he added.
At the press conference the NATO secretary general told the Wall Street Journal that all sides including Russia should focus on the main enemy that is the Islamic State (ISIS).
“The common enemy should be ISIL,” he said. “And I would welcome all efforts to fight ISIL. And it is important that all of us, also Russia, is guided by the overarching goal of defeating ISIL.”
