Obama dragged into Russia-Turkey showdown in Syria

President Obama is finding himself dragged into a tense standoff between Russia and Turkey even as he struggles to keep the U.S. military focused on the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The recent downing of a Russian fighter jet by Turkish forces over Syria sharpened divisions over the four year Syrian civil war and threatened to further chill relations between Syria’s backers — Russia and Iran — and the U.S.-led international coalition against ISIS.

{mosads}In its military campaign against ISIS, the Obama administration has tried to avoid any unintended conflict with either Russia or the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The Pentagon has taken painstaking steps to keep its troops from coming into contact with Russian forces, including opening a communications channel, even though relations between the two military were suspended over Ukraine last year.

The administration has also pressed Moscow to redirect its military campaign from bolstering Assad to going after ISIS.

There were hopes after ISIS bombed a Russian airliner last month that Putin would focus his military on the terror group. Russia, though, has ignored U.S. calls to stop targeting opposition forces and instead hit ISIS.

Turkey’s shootdown of the Russian fighter raises difficult questions for Obama.

An immediate concern is how the administration should respond if Russia retaliates against Turkey — a NATO ally. The U.S. has sworn to defend any country that invokes Article Five of the alliance’s founding treaty, which treats an attack against one member as an attack on all.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called Turkey’s actions a “stab in the back,” and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cancelled a planned visit to Turkey this week. 

Both nations are hunkering down.

Istanbul said in a statement that the two SU-24 Russian aircraft were warned 10 times by radar over five minutes but that both jets proceeded to violate Turkish airspace for 17 seconds. One aircraft left, but the other one was shot down by Turkish F-16s conducting air patrols.

“The violated airspace is also NATO airspace,” Turkey’s statement said. 

Russia responded that Turkey made no attempt to communicate to the Russian pilots, and denied that its aircraft crossed into Turkey, adding that it was Turkish aircraft that violated Syria’s airspace. 

Russia also said its aircraft were also flying over a part of Syria “controlled by the most radical illegal armed groups” with over 1000 “militants.” Those groups could include Syrian Turkmen rebels supported by Turkey.

Moscow is also vowing to take additional measures to protect its aircraft over Syria, including sending a ship to the region with an air defense system, and warning that all “potentially dangerous targets will be destroyed.” Russian officials are also terminating military contacts with Turkey.

Those moves could only heighten the likelihood of an accident above Syria, where nine countries — the U.S., France, Russia, Australia, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates — are conducting airstrikes, with the United Kingdom potentially joining. 

The administration has been quick to urge calm on both sides.

Obama on Tuesday evening called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and expressed U.S. and NATO support for Turkey’s right to defend its airspace and encouraged deescalating the situation.

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov the next day, and called “for calm and for dialogue between Turkish and Russian officials in the days ahead.”

He “also stressed the need for both sides not to allow this incident to escalate tensions between their two countries or in Syria,” and “underscored the importance of progress toward a diplomatic solution in Syria continuing unabated.” 

Experts at the European Leadership Network said Russia’s response will be “crucial.” 

“It may choose to escalate the situation by retaliating against Turkey and its interests” on the pretext that Turkey is siding with terrorists, research director Lukasz Kulesa and research fellow Thomas Frear wrote.

“It may even move to present the whole incident as an element of the US / NATO intrigue against Russia… That would considerably raise the level of danger, moving us all to the brink of conflict,” they added. 

According to reports, Syrian rebels on the ground killed the Russian pilot and targeted rescue crews.

Kulesa and Frear predicted that while Russia may choose a different path, retaliatory action against those rebels seems “inevitable.”  

On Wednesday, the Pentagon said it was aware of reports that a Turkish humanitarian aid convoy was hit by an airstrike approximately six kilometers south of the Turkish border. A U.S. defense official said the U.S.-led coalition is not responsible. 

The flashpoint could become an issue in the 2016 race, with some Republican contenders already criticizing the administration’s response.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) urged the administration to take a strong stance against Russia, while Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called for U.S. restraint.

“It’s important for us to be very clear that we will respond and defend Turkey if they come under assault from the Russians. Otherwise the entire NATO alliance comes into question,” Rubio told Fox News on Tuesday.

Paul said the incident “illustrates precisely why we need open lines of communication with Russia and should resist calls from some presidential candidates to isolate ourselves from discussions with our adversaries.” 

Experts say getting a diplomatic solution in Syria will now be even harder. Russian-Turkish tensions were already high, following previous Russian incursions into Turkey’s airspace. 

“On the Turkish side, there is no appetite for greater coalition-Russian cooperation vis-a-vis the Islamic State inside Syria,” Aaron Stein, Nonresident Senior Fellow t the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, said in a briefing Tuesday.

“If [Russia] takes a really escalatory step that makes it impossible to coordinate at the military level or a diplomatic level, then we will have lost an important opportunity,” added Barry Pavel, Director of the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.

“If, on the other hand, it does something small to save face… playing a more constructive role both in the coalition going after ISIS targets and showing flexibility on moving Assad out of there toward a legitimate transition, then we have a different ballgame,” he added

— Rebecca Kheel contributed to this story.