President al-Assad tells the Turkish Jimhoureet newspaper that the Turkish government has destroyed most of the relations that were built between Syria and Turkey, but the base remains which is the relation between the Syrian and Turkish Peoples.

President al-Assad stresses that Syria will not accept any thing imposed from outside, adding that the Americans are part of the problem because they support the terrorists.

Competent authorities storm into terrorists' hideouts in Homs and Aleppo and arrest some of them in addition to confiscatinmg their weapons

Joumhureet Turkiya daily has published a part of the interview held with President Bashar Al Assad on the events in Syria and regional and international developments.

A number of Turkish news media namely Joumhurret daily, represented by Jacker Ozal and De & CNN Turk Channels and Posta daily represented by Mohammad Ali Perand, Hureyet daily represented by Artogrol Ozkok, Redical Daily represented by Fahim Tashtaken, and Khabar Turk daily represented by Anbreen Zaman had requested an interview with President Al Assad.

As Syria follows an open policy with news media, their requests were approved to grant them the interviews. However, four representatives of the fore mentioned news media were not able to come to Syria to conduct the interview after the director of the office of the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayeb Erdogan had contacted them and asked them not to hold the interview.

In an interview with tehTurkish Jumhoureyet daily, the Presdient said

This phase is full of events & developments. It delineates the map of a whole region and resembles what happened one hundred years ago when the Ottoman Empire declined and differences erupted between the Arabs and the Turks. Both Arabs and Turks lost, the President said, adding that it is not reasonable that we suddenly want to return to that phase in order for us and you to lose again.

Since the beginning of the crisis in Syria we have been trying to work in more than one direction. The first is to solve the internal crisis in Syria and confront the terrorists. The second is to attempt to safeguard the Syrian-Turkish relations.

However, we have seen in every address made & every step taken by the present government in Turkey an attempt in the direction of blowing up such relations. I can tell you that they have succeeded to destroy most of the structure we had built. What has remained now is the basis, namely the relations between the two peoples.

The Presdient added The Syrian side had no knowledge of the plane’s identity before dropping it. The plane was shot down by the smallest anti aircraft gun that does not go beyond two point five kilometers. It is very difficult for anti aircraft guns to shoot down a plane unless it flies very low. This means that it was less than two kilometers far from land and at a very low altitude. We as a state are in a state of war. When an aircraft is not identified then you assume that it is an enemy aircraft.

What has not been talked about, teh president pointed out, is that the place the aircraft penetrated our airspace is the same place across which Israel had always tried to penetrate our airspace. Consequently the breach at this border site gives the impression to the Syrian military that the plane could be hostile and he has to act on such basis, according to the aircraft speed, altitude and extent of its penetration of the air space.

The enemy for us is only the Israeli. We felt that Erdogan and his government wanted to take advantage of this subject to reap gains they had not been able to reap last year, in order to create hostility between the Syrian and Turkish peoples, the Presdient stressed.

We wish no such event happens with any non hostile plane not only with a Turkish plane. Yet any an unidentified plane and under the same circumstances, even if it were a Syrian plane, would be considered hostile.

Why they did not notify us that there were planes which would approach the Syrian air space. Had there been coordination between the Syrian and Turkish armies, we would have been notified about the maneuvers. Appraisal of the situation would have been easier in such cases.

The Turkish side should speak out publicly what the plane was doing in Syrian airspace. Yet we are not demanding such explanation because we regard the events as a casual accident, the President pointed out.