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ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted June 22 as saying that Damascus had apologized over a Turkish fighter jet crash, in a comment that suggested the plane was shot down by Syria.
“Syria immediately offered a very serious apology for the incident and admitted it was a mistake,” Haberturk daily newspaper quoted Erdogan as saying onboard a plane on the way to Turkey from Brazil.
“At this moment the Air Force and Navy are conducting search and rescue operations in the western Mediterranean, and luckily our pilots are alive, we have just lost a plane,” he reportedly told the same daily.
The incident prompted the government to call an emergency security summit led by Erdogan, who summoned military and intelligence chiefs, as well as the interior, foreign and defense ministers.
