QUESTION: You’re saying Turkey has the right to defend itself; President Obama said the same thing. What defense are you talking about? Does anyone think Russia was going to attack Turkey?

MR TONER: Again, I mean, this is --

QUESTION: Do you think so?

MR TONER: Look, I don’t want to parse out this incident. I said very clearly that we don’t know all the facts yet, so for me to speak categorically about what happened is – frankly, would be irresponsible. We’re still gathering the facts of what happened. The NATO – or the NAC met in Brussels today. We’re still talking with Turkey. We’re still trying to determine the series of events that led to the incident earlier today. Let’s find out before we can make a determination – a definitive determination about what happened.

QUESTION: Well, even if you --

MR TONER: That said – let me finish. That said, we’re also very clear that any country, when its airspace is violated and its territory is violated, has the right to defend itself. That’s for that country to make that determination. I don’t know what happened, I’m not going to speak definitively as to what happened, but that’s the principle at play here.

QUESTION: Even if you accept the Turkish version that the plane traveled 1.3 miles inside Turkey and violated its airspace for 17 seconds – that’s according to Turkey – do you think shooting down the plane was the right thing to do?

MR TONER: Again, I’m not going to give you our assessment at this point. We’re still gathering the facts. What I think is important in the aftermath of this incident – and I’ve said it multiple times today already as the President obviously spoke to it – is de-escalation. We want to see Turkey and Russia talk to each other. We want to see, frankly, these kinds of incidents eliminated going forward.

QUESTION: Yes. In 2012, Syria shot down a Turkish plane that reportedly strayed into its territory. Prime Minister Erdogan then said, “A short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack.” Meanwhile, NATO has expressed its condemnation of Syria’s attack as well as strong support for Turkey. Do you see the inconsistency of NATO’s response on this?

MR TONER: As to what President Erdogan may have said after that incident, I would refer you to him. We had, again --

QUESTION: NATO’s condemnation of Syria’s attack --

MR TONER: -- again – hold on, hold on --

QUESTION: -- and the U.S. is part of NATO, so you --

MR TONER: -- hold on, hold on, hold on. What you’re talking about today – we said we’re still gathering the facts. We’re not ready to make a determination yet. We’ve – we know what Turkey says happened. If that’s indeed true, Turkey does – the President said this – have a right to defend its airspace. As others have mentioned, this is not the first such incident. It is part of what happens when you have another power operating on the border of a country, again, carrying out airstrikes that aren’t part of the broader coalition efforts to counter ISIL. But I’m not going to make a determination and I’m not going to talk about incidents that happened three or four years prior.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2015/11/249928.htm