“The plane was using a corridor which Israeli planes have used three times before. Soldiers shot it down because we did not see it on our radar and because information was not given,” the Cumhuriyet newspaper quoted Assad as saying in an interview published on Tuesday.

“Of course I might have been happy if this had been an Israeli plane,” Assad said.

Assad said that he would not allow the tensions between Syria and Turkey to turn into open combat.

“We learned that it (the plane) belonged to Turkey after shooting it down. I say 100 percent ‘if only we had not shot it down’,”