The masks that fell along with the downed Russian plane

The refusal of the military units of the Turkish Armed Forces to allow the violation of airspace by an aircraft (despite 10 warnings) took on an entirely different dimension once it became clear that the downed aircraft belonged to Russia. In the heat of the crisis, both in international public opinion and in Turkey, people suddenly began to discuss whether this dispute between Russia and Turkey would turn into a hot conflict.

Treating the crisis on a lower register, the panic-mongering clerks began to speak of the possibility of Russia turning off Turkey's gas valve, trying to create an atmosphere of panic in society. With the reawakened Putin infatuation of our "always oppositional" "cosmopolitan intelligentsia," such an atmosphere emerged that almost nobody asked the question of why Turkey shot down the Russian aircraft. Some know-it-alls even went so far as to say, "Would you shoot down a plane over a 17-second violation?" Not one of the Aydın Doğan media and the scribblers who speak the language of the Parallel Gang saw any need to mention Turkey's sovereign rights.

So much so that in some of them a small hope appeared, however slight, that with Putin's boost gear they could overthrow the AK Parti government, which they had failed to overthrow through democratic means despite long efforts. The interest and closeness shown by our "democracy-loving, always oppositional" intelligentsia, as they see themselves, toward Putin, who crushes even the mildest opposition thought in his country by inhuman means, also makes it easier for us to guess what their political perspective might be if they came to power.

The matter is in fact quite simple. For Turkey, within its rules of engagement, to intervene against "indeterminate nationality" aircraft approaching its own airspace is its most natural right, deriving from its sovereignty over its borders and from international law. In exercising this right there is no obligation to obtain approval from any authority or body. The information that Russian aircraft violated Turkey's airspace has also been confirmed by NATO sources.

With all this information on the table, it cannot be explained by reason that Russian President Putin, with the kind of cunning of "the brazen thief who overpowers the householder," states that he expects an apology from Turkey. I suppose Putin, who is said to love vodka very much, did not say such a thing with a sober head. In a sense this is like Ukraine apologizing because Russia occupied Crimea, which is Ukrainian territory. In short, absurd. But the only one responsible for this absurdity is not Putin, who has recently not been walking around with a sober head.

The reason for this Russian blindness about apologies is the self-confidence created in the Russian President by the "ostrich doctrine" that US President Obama calls "smart power," and by the European Union's lack of a foreign policy perspective. For disregarding international law and attacking the sovereign rights of states carries no sanction for Russia. In the end, the reaction it received from a country as sensitive about sovereign rights as Turkey may have weighed heavily on Russia.

Above all, in the heat of the event, the Russian President's accusation that Turkey buys oil from DAESH is nothing more than a claim so low and unbecoming as to be unworthy of the seriousness of a state and a statesman. There can be only one reason for making such an illogical claim. While trying to establish a precedent by violating Turkey's sovereign rights, Russia, in the disappointment created by having its charisma scratched by Turkey, appeals to the zeitgeist and in a sense issues a call for a Crusade against Turkey. The mention by a representative from the Russian Duma of returning Hagia Sophia to the Orthodox world as compensation for the downed warplane can be taken as an argument that fills in the content of precisely this aim.

Moreover, its belief that it will restore its scratched charisma by raining bombs on the innocent Turkmen and the civilian population in northern Syria is a perfect sign of degeneration. Russia's intervention in Syria in this way, its raining bombs on the people of the region by the very methods we have been criticizing for years, will completely reverse the Russian figure formed in the region during the Soviet era, and social memory will begin to recall once more the 19th-century saying "there is no comrade to be had from the Muscovite infidel."

Since the Tsarist era Russia has tried at intervals to be active in the Middle East and to establish a distinct influence, but has not been successful. The approach of the people of the region toward Putin, who has now begun to hope that, owing to the conjunctural situation in Syria, he may settle in the region, and who is acting with the zeal of becoming the new Russian Tsar, shows that Russia's future in the region will not be very long. In other words, what fell on the Syrian border is not an aircraft but Russia's prestige in the region. It is the new Tsar Putin's exhausting of the more or less positive capital that the Bolsheviks left behind in the region. For now there is no difference between Putin and Assad for the people of the region. The two elements guiding him in the region are Assad and the PYD. The sorry end of those who take crows as their guides is among the most interesting subjects of history. Future generations will read Putin's story among these subjects too, at this rate.