* Erdogan says beware wrath of Turkey
* Says Syrian attack on jet was deliberate
* Fighting rages around Damascus (Adds Russian comments, Geneva meeting)
By Oliver
Holmes and Jon Hemming
BEIRUT/ANKARA, June 26 (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told
Syria to beware the wrath of Turkey after the shooting down of a warplane and
said he had ordered the armed forces to react to any military threat from Syria
near the two countries' border.
Erdogan's warning to Syria reflected increased tensions not only on the
Mediterranean coast, where the aircraft was shot down last Friday, but on a long
common land border criss-crossed by rebels fighting President Bashar
al-Assad.
Syria said on Sunday it had killed several "terrorists" infiltrating from
Turkey.
In Syria itself, Damascus suburbs were gripped by the worst fighting in the
capital since the uprising against Assad began 16 months ago. The city had long
been seen as a bastion of support for the president.
Erdogan, who fell out with Assad after he dismissed his advice to allow
reforms, said Turkey was no warmonger.
"Our rational response should not be perceived as weakness, our mild manners
do not mean we are a tame lamb," he told a meeting of his parliamentary party.
"Everybody should know that Turkey's wrath is just as strong and devastating as
its friendship is valuable."
NATO member states, summoned by Turkey to an urgent meeting in Brussels,
condemned Syria over the incident that resulted in the loss of two airmen. The
cautious wording of a statement demonstrated the fear of Western powers as well
as Turkey that armed intervention in Syria could stir a sectarian conflict
across the region.
"Those who want war may be disappointed by the prime minister's speech,"
Turkish journalist Mehmet Ali Birand wrote on socila media. "But a big part of
society breathed a sigh of relief."
Erdogan said the armed forces' rules of engagement had been changed as a
result of the attack, which Turkey says took place without warning in
international air space.
"Every military element approaching Turkey from the Syrian border and
representing a security risk and danger will be assessed as a military threat
and will be treated as a military target," he said.
DAMASCUS FIGHTING
Turkey is the base for the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) and shelters more
than 30,000 refugees - a number Erdogan worries could rise sharply as fighting
spreads. Rebel soldiers move regularly across the border and defectors muster
inside Turkey.
Fighting has often moved very close to the frontier and could under the new
rules of engagement draw Turkish military reaction, especially if Syrian forces
pursue rebels.
Rebels and pro-Assad forces now clash daily across Syria. Fighting broke out
in the suburbs of Damascus on Tuesday, activists said.
Video posted by activists showed heavy gunfire and explosions. Blood pooled
on a pavement in Qudsiya suburb and a blood trail led to a building to where one
casualty had been dragged. A naked man writhed, his body pierced by
shrapnel.
The Syrian state news agency SANA said insurgents had blocked the old road
from Damascus to Beirut.
Dozens of them were killed or wounded and others arrested it said. Government
forces also seized rocket launchers, sniper rifles, machineguns and a huge
amount of ammunition, it said.
Syrian and Turkish accounts of Friday's plane shoot down differed.
Syria says it had no choice but to take out the plane as it entered Syrian
air space flying low and at high speed. It found out it was Turkish only after
the engagement. Turkey insists its aircraft entered Syrian air space only
briefly by mistake.
Erdogan said Syrian military helicopters had violated Turkish airspace five
times this year without Turkey firing on them. He saw Friday's attack as a
deliberate attack.
"Our plane was targeted on purpose, and in a hostile way, not as a result of
a mistake. The attitude of the Syrian officials following the incident is the
most concrete evidence that our jet was attacked on purpose."
According to Turkey, the Phantom jet was testing Turkish air defences near
the countries' common maritime border when it was shot down. Some analysts say
it might also have been probing Syria's Russian-supplied radar and air defences
that would be an obstacle to any form of Western military involvement in
Syria.
Russia, which has opposed Western calls for Assad's removal, said the shoot
down should not been seen as a provocation or a premeditated action.
Moscow has close relations with Damascus and has a naval base at Syria's port
city of Tartus close to the spot where the jet was downed.
RUSSIAN ARMS
Moscow-based defence think-tank CAST said Russia was expected to deliver
nearly half a billion dollars worth of air defence systems, repaired helicopters
and fighter jets to Syria this year despite international pressure to halt the
arms sales.
Russia said it was crucial that Iran should also attend a meeting on Syria of
the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and regional players being
organised by international mediator Kofi Annan in Geneva this weekend.
Western countries oppose Iran, Syria's closest regional ally, taking part in
the meeting and some diplomats have said it was not entirely clear whether it
would take place.
Friday's incident is unlikely to increase Turkey's appetite for an
intervention it fears would have unpredictable consequences for itself and for a
region riven by sectarian division. But it has in the past spoken of the
possibility of creating humanitarian corridors inside Syria.
"For Turkey there are two bad scenarios: one, a mass influx of refugees and
two, large-scale massacres in Syria," said a Turkish official who declined to be
named.
"Ankara has not taken a decision for military intervention or a humanitarian
corridor at the moment. But if these are needed, everybody would prefer that
they will be done with international legitimacy. However, if things go really
badly we have to be ready for any kind of eventuality," he added.
(Additional reporting by Jonathon
Burch and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Ayla
Jean Yackley and Daren
Butler in Istanbul, Mirna Sleiman in Beirut, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman,
Justyna Pawlak in Brussels, David
Brunnstrom in Washington and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations;
Writing by Ralph
Boulton; Editing by Janet McBride)
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