As it will be recalled, following the clear and unacceptable attacks of the Syrian regime against Turkey, changes to the engagement rules towards Syria had been announced and necessary warnings had been issued to the Syrian regime through a statement by H.E. Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey on 26 June 2012.

Even though the Syrian regime had declared that it would stay committed to the Turkish-Syrian Border Commission Protocol, it acted in defiance of this commitment.

In this context, the regime’s aircraft acted in contravention of Article 15 of the above-mentioned protocol providing that “parties shall take every measure to prevent their own planes from violating the air border of the other party and that their planes will be prevented from approaching the air border line for more than 5 kilometers” at various times. In each case the Syrian regime had been warned with a note by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey through the Consulate-General of Syria in Istanbul and it was notified that in case the violations continued, we would not hesitate in taking the necessary precautions.

Indeed, the necessary response had been given when a helicopter, testing our determination on this issue, violated our airspace on 16 September 2013.

Ultimately, today (March 23) our military authorities made the required warnings as two fighter aircraft of the Syrian regime approached our border. One of these aircraft turned back upon our warnings while the other disregarded them and violated our airspace. Consequently, our air force engaged the aircraft in line with our rights emanating from international law and our rules of engagement strict application of which had been previously announced.

The declarations made by the Syrian regime on this matter are entirely baseless.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, the United Nations Security Council, the Secretary-General of NATO and the North Atlantic Council are being duly informed of the incident.

We will keep taking all the necessary measures regarding the legitimate right of self-defense provided by international law in general and in Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations in particular against the Syrian regime's threats and attacks to our national security.

We expect and advise that the resolve of the Turkish Armed Forces, which have shown once again today their capability to execute superbly any duty entrusted with them for the protection of our national security will henceforth not be challenged.