The unthinkable is not something we are thinking about at the moment.
We are trained to ask "What's wrong and how we fix it?" Instead, start by asking - "What works, what have we got, what's possible and who cares?"
And it would be a bit out of character. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have started out as a reformer, but he really enjoys being seen as a larger-than-life tough-guy figure. He doesn't go on photographed hunting expeditions, for instance. But he does have hero moments, such as when his convoy stopped in the middle of the Bosphorus Bridge and he allegedly talked down a jumper, prevented him from committing suicide.
He [Erdogan] has crept up to the edge talking about mistakes by pilots. But he also knows that with leaders like himself and Vladimir Putin, apologies may not be the answer. Just look at Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized years ago to Erdogan over this incident off the coast of Gaza in which Turkish people died onboard an aid ship. And only just now is that relationship at least in talks to be improved.
here are problems with the Turkish products inside Russia and the tourism going down. People are worried about that. But the really big economic weapons, oil and especially natural gas, those have not been brought into play yet - mostly in the form of threat so far. So basically the view from here is that, yeah, things are getting bad, but they could still get much, much worse.
Turkey's NATO membership is one thing that is forestalling the worst-case scenario - open conflict between Russia and Turkey - because neither Moscow nor the West wants a Russian NATO conflict to erupt.
We are seeing reports that NATO's sending early warning radar planes and German military personnel to Turkey. That might reduce the chances of another incident like this jet shoot down. And obviously both NATO and the U.S. are pressing their ally Turkey to urgently deescalate the situation.
I think it's important to remember the tensions between Turkey and Russia predate this jet shoot down by some time. I mean, Russia's long been Bashar al-Assad's strongest backer.
