Amateur theater

The Turkish pilots who shot down the Russian bomber made this decision on their own. This was stated by the Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey Mehmet Shimshki at a press conference in Moscow, Interfax reports .

"As for the incident on November 24: for a long period, the Syrian aircraft shot down Turkish aircraft, so we changed the rules for response to aircraft in the airspace of Turkey: the powers to knock down the aircraft were reduced to the level of pilots. The pilots independently decided to knock down the aircraft," Shimshki said. "There was no information on the national belonging of a downed aircraft."

“There is also information that the same pilots participated in the bombing of peaceful objects during the coup. Now it is checked, I do not want to take the functions of the judicial organs,” the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister emphasized.

On Tuesday, Shimshki held negotiations with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. Turkey wants to bring relations with Russia to a qualitatively new level, Shimshka said following the results of the meeting. “We are here in order to normalize the situation as quickly as possible and our relations, which were interrupted from November 24. Russia is not only our close neighbor, but also a strategic partner. Our relations were interrupted for an indefinite moment. But today we are here in order to improve and bring them to a level above on November 24,” said the Turkish vice -premier.

At the same time, Shimshka emphasized that he did not have information that Russia allegedly warned of the prepared attempt on the coup on July 15.

Shimshka also said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to come to St. Petersburg on August 9. The Kremlin confirmed that on this day, negotiations of Erdogan and Vladimir Putin will take place.

On July 16, the involvement of one of the pilots who shot down the Su-24 to the coup, said the mayor of Ankara Melikh Gökchk. According to the politician, the military belonged to the organization of the preacher Fathullah Gulen, known as the “deep state” or “parallel state”. It was this organization, according to the Turkish authorities, that stood beyond the attempt of the coup.

“It was the“ parallel state ”that ruined our relations with Russia,” said Gokochk. “It was an incident in which one of the pilots of this structure participated, I was absolutely sure. He was one of the participants in the coup.”

On July 19, an unnamed Turkish official confirmed the detention of two Turkish pilots who shot down the Su-24.

Su-24, bombing in the north of Syria, the positions of local Turkmen, was shot down on November 24 with a rocket from the Turkish F-16, when he violated the boundaries of the airspace of Turkey. The Russian pilots were baptized, but the commander of the aircraft Oleg Peshkov was shot by Turkmen rebels from the ground.

The incident entailed a sharp deterioration in Russian-Turkish relations, which normalized only at the end of June, when Erdogan expressed regret in connection with the death of the aircraft .