Will there be a military escalation between the NATO member Turkey and Russia inyour estimation?

I don’t think so. I think Russia understands that a further escalation is justsomething they won’t be able to control. This would be the first confrontation betweenRussia and NATO. NATO declared yesterday very clearly that it stands 100%behind Turkey and that NATO is prepared to defend all of Turkey’s and thereforeall of NATO territory. I think Russian understands that. I think we were hearinga lot of bluster. We were seeing some military maneuvering that would make itmore difficult to enter Syria air space. But I don’t think we are gonna see amajor escalation.

Then, why do you think Turkey shoot down this Russian fighter jet? What was behind thatmove in your opinion?

Well, I think there are two reasons. One is that Russian happen flying dangerously closeat a time into Turkish airspace, by the way, an area which there are no large ISIS’sconcentration. But in fact R-- forces that trying to take out the Assad region.This isn’t going on now from the very beginning that the Russian airplanes werethere. They have been doing –,fights and naval maneuvers, ground maneuvers allround NATO Territory and it was about to happen that one of these dayssomething would go wrong. This is not the time to play a game of Chicken withmilitary means. But it’s time to work out procedures to make sure that the incidentlike this can not happen again. Turkish air space is Turkish air space, whateveris 1 second or 15 seconds, 2 minutes or 5 minutes. It’s Turkish air space. Theywere warned not to enter, they did so. Russia should have been behaved muchmore responsibly by flying further away from the border.