Incidents like these rarely happen–but when they do, turmoil typically ensues.

As reported on the morning of November 24th, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane after it violated the country’s airspace near the Syrian border. According to defense officials, the plane was taken down about two seconds after it crossed into Turkish territory.

The reason for Turkey’s shooting down of the warplane was that the Russians had been launching airstrikes against Turkomen forces inside Syria for the past couple days.

When interviewed about the attacks, a Turkish senior defense official told that they were aware of the Russian airstrikes. The defense’s awareness of the airstrikes prompts many to believe that this was an act of retaliation by the Turkish defense.

Turkish officials also revealed that Russia had been warned about violations of their airspace. In fact, Russia had reportedly been warned 10 times before it was shot down.

This act of retaliation could have some major influences on what’s in store from the Russians in the coming months. When interviewed about the attacks, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the retaliation from Turkey as a “stab in the back.” Putin was later asked about what Russia’s next move will be, and Putin responded saying this attack will result in some serious consequences for Turkey.

Now at this point, we’re probably all thinking, “Well, it was a warplane, and the Russians have been doing airstrikes recently.” However, Putin described the plane as presenting no harm, saying it was meant for fighting ISIL (another acronym for ISIS) located in Latakia, just south of Turkey.

Although this attack doesn’t affect the U.S. directly, the reaction from Russia and what they do with Turkey could affect us. Turkey is an ally of the United States, and after hearing of the recent incident, President Obama responded with support of Turkey, saying they had the right to defend their country. While being interviewed, President Obama also mentioned that this incident shouldn’t bring about more wartime escalation throughout the region.

Later in the day on November 24th, it was reported that after the attack a helicopter searching for the shot-down plane was also shot down, but by Syrian rebels this time.

At this time, NATO is currently issuing statements telling all parties involved in this act to avoid escalating it into something worse. Although it remains to be seen what Russia is planning, we can expect some form of retaliation given Putin’s response to the attack.

Overall, I hope America keeps track of who the real enemy is here, and that’s ISIS. Although Russia was attacked by Turkey, we should all keep in mind that this wasn’t just out of the blue. Russia was warned 10 times by Turkey, yet they decided to disobey them and stay in their airspace. This was avoidable, but Russia just had to be stubborn.

After hearing of this attack, social media has erupted, referring to this attack as a precursor of “World War Three.” Although I highly doubt that this will escalate into something that big, what Russia does in the next couple of weeks will have a large impact on what is to become of all this chaos. All in all, I hope after mourning their losses Russia will be able to admit that they were stubborn in this situation and move on from it.