From Uri Friedman, Passport:  If Turkey has reason to believe that Syria shot down its plane, might NATO respond in a similar fashion? It’s not an entirely unreasonable question. The bloody and protracted crisis in Syria has poisoned relations between Ankara and Damascus, and Turkey suggested in April that it might turn to NATO under Article V to help protect its border in response to incursions by Syrian forces — a threat Syria condemned as "provocative."

But Kurt Volker, the executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, points out that Article V simply offers NATO allies an opportunity to consult with one another and does not necessarily entail a military response. If Turkey wanted to bring today’s incident to the alliance, it would most likely instruct the Turkish ambassador in Brussels to work with NATO’s secretary-general on calling a formal meeting to discuss the episode and formulate an appropriate response.

"A response could be anything from a statement reiterating the inviolability of security guarantees to members coordinating activities so that they can respond to further attacks on Turkish interests," Volker says. 

He doesn’t believe today’s incident alone will alter the international community’s response to the Syrian conflict, but he does think a NATO meeting on the matter could nurture a broader discussion about how to intervene militarily in Syria outside the U.N. Security Council, where Russia and China have repeatedly opposed such action. One scenario, he adds, could be Western and Arab countries joining forces to create "safe zones" in Syria, support the Syrian opposition, and conduct aerial strikes against Syria’s offensive military assets. 

"I do get the feeling that the patience of the international community is growing thinner," Volker explains. "With the recent village-by-village slaughter [in Syria] and brazenness of the Russians in trying to arm the Syrians, I think we may be approaching a point at which this kind of coalition intervention is more thinkable than it was a couple months ago."

James Joyner, the managing editor of the Atlantic Council, points out that if Syria shot down the lost Turkish plane in Syrian air space, it would not be considered an attack under NATO’s charter. Even if NATO determines that Syria attacked Turkey, he adds, he doesn’t think the alliance has any appetite for going to war with Syria.

"It would be one thing if Syria sent ground troops into Turkey and started shooting," he says, "but shooting down a plane that might have been surveilling Syrian air space is just a different animal than that. This is more of a harsh words and sanctions kind of thing, and frankly there’s not much more of that that we can do in terms of Syria."  (photo: Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty)

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