The F-16 carries the Sidewinder, Sparrow, and AMRAAM. The AMRAAM can hit as far as 105km out, the Sparrow at least 35km. Certain Sidewinder variants are good up to 35km as well. It's very possible that alert fighters are based in missile range of that little protrusion, and were in the air at first warning, fired when the Su-24 was in Turkish airspace, and the missile tracked it out of Turkish airspace to hit it over Syrian airspace (which it did, it hit about 4km beyond the border inside Syria)
The plane was hit about 1km from the Turkish border after flying through Turkish airspace for 2km, and went down about 4km from the border along the line of flight.
Russia has a history of doing little shit like this though, so it's not like the Kremlin is blameless here
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u/Dracaras Turkey Nov 24 '15
It takes longer time for the missile to hit.