Having lost its reconnaissance plane to the Syrian air defense on Saturday the Turkish government was first holding back. But after having been pushed by the British foreign minister, the French and likely also by the interventionists in Washington the tone of the Turkish government changed.
It demanded a NATO Article 4 consultation which was granted but ended today in a relatively calm statement. It even leaves open where the Turkish plane was hit, within Syrian national waters, as the Syrian government says, or over international waters as the Turks claim. There clearly is suspicion by some NATO countries that Turkey provoked this incident.
But the NATO statement wasn’t enough for the Turkish prime minister. This morning he spoke to the Turkish parliament and I have serious concern that some of his statements were in preparation of creating Turkish protected safe zones for the Syrian insurgents on Syrian ground:
“The rules of engagement of the Turkish Armed Forces have changed,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised speech. “Any military element that approaches the Turkish border from Syria and poses a security risk and danger will be regarded as a threat and treated as a military target.”
What is the distance that is described with “approaches the Turkish boarder from Syria”? Is this a fifty meter no-go zone or a 100 miles deep buffer zone within which Turkey will go after any Syrian troop movement?
The insurgents currently dominate in some of the border areas to Turkey. The border-towns in Turkey is where their supplies are coming from. If the Syrian army moves against these insurgents on Syrian ground will that be “regarded as a threat and treated as a military target” by the Turkish government?
It seems that Erdogan plans to act against the Turkish public opinion and to order his military to use a generous interpretation of what “approaches the border” means and starts to attack Syrian troops on Syrian ground. This would be another provocation and likely an escalation on to a full fledged war on Syria.
As a sign of what might come this video and a picture, uploaded only a few hours ago, allegedly showing Turkish tank units deploying towards the Syrian border.