Erdogan lost nerve in Syrian, downed Russian jet: Assad

Turkey shot down a Russian military jet because it wanted to prevent the success of the military operation against terrorists in Syria, said Syrian President Bashar Assad.

In an interview due to be aired in full on Tuesday, the Syrian President was asked whether he could see a peace deal being signed in Prague, as Czech President Milos Zeman had suggested in September.

“Naturally, if you ask Syrians they will tell you they don’t want a peace conference in France because France supports terrorism and war, not peace”, he said.

The US said last month that most of the air strikes were against “moderate Syrian opposition forces” opposed to Syria’s government. European border has allowed hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria to enter the continent in 2015 without verifying the documents and their identities properly. “Supporting Assad prolongs the civil war”, TASS reports the head of Pentagon said.

French President Francois Hollande has called for unity between Turkey and Russian Federation.

In the interview, Mr Assad said the incident showed that his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had “lost his nerve” because Russia’s involvement had altered what was at stake.

Assad also said that peace would only return to Syria when “France, the United Kingdom, the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and some others stop supporting terrorists”.

“The failure of Erdogan in Syria, the failure of his terrorist groups, means his political demise”, he said. “The majority, they are good Syrians, they are patriots… That’s true, and how many is hard to say”.