Pilot Cpt. Gokhan Ertan and pilot Lt. Hasan Huseyin Aksoy had been missing since their F-4 jet plane was shot down by Syria on June 22.

Search and rescue personnel were moving the bodies of the pilots from the sea bed onto a ship on the surface. The bodies were located at a depth of 1,260 meters, according to Hurriyet daily news.

Turkey has deployed military hardware along its southern border since Syria shot down the Turkish jet on June 22, escalating tensions between the two countries.

Syria says it shot down the Turkish jet in self-defense and that it was brought down in Syrian air space.

But Turkey says that although the jet had violated Syria’s airspace, it was in international airspace when it was shot down.

Erdogan said Syria shot down the unarmed plane in international airspace in a “hostile” act and without warning and vowed to act “decisively”.

Meanwhile, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has accused Turkey of giving logistical support to Syrian “terrorists” and told Ankara to stop interfering in his country’s affairs in a second part of an interview published on Wednesday.

Assad also accused the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of being “two-faced” for pursuing a sectarian agenda in the region and trying to persuade Syria to introduce political reforms while ignoring the killings and democratic shortfalls in different Arab states.

There are  more than 35,000 Syrian refugees living in camps in Turkey along the Syrian borders since violence erupted in the country.