Hey! Didja know there's other countries besides the US and that a couple of them look like they might be going to war any minute now.
I sincerely hope Turkey either crushes Syria or backs some faction of the rebels that support a Turkey-style democracy in Syria.
Turkey borders Iran and Iraq. Somehow I doubt they would go to full scale war with Syria with such countries sitting on their doorstep. I'm sure you thought of that already though.
I can't imagine that Iraq has any form of fighting capacity left in it. Putting on my Daytonesque armchair generals beret, I would say one on one, Turkey would flatten Syria. The influence of Iran and Russia you would think would rule out a real war. Oh, and just to spread some confusion amongst the right wingers on here, even though Turkey is western friendly, its......... a muslim country!
No, I don't think that would be an intelligent assumption nor is there any evidence to suggest such a thing. Do you just like dreaming up conspiracy theories without any evidence?
Doesn't need to fight, just not support. It would never be one on one. Plus Syria is more powerful then you realise. Ssssssshhhhhhh. They haven't noticed yet.....
This is more about keeping Syrian refugees from flooding Turkey. Arguably they'd prefer the current regime's 'stability' than the chaos that would ensue from any uprising.
Who cares if Turkey is Muslim or not? Kemal Attaturk is one of my heros among national leaders. He almost singlehandedly built a viable, modern nation out of a dying, decaying empire on the losing side of the greatest war ever fought up to that time. He built a democracy where none had existed before. Even even encouraged the formation of political parties directly opposed to his own. His speech concerning the allied dead at Gallipoli, "your sons now lie in the soil of a friendly nation, your dead are our dead now" was masterful. Note, the British, Australian, & New Zealanders killed in the killing fields of Gallipoli are buried in cemetaries among the Turkish dead with no distinctions between who fought for which side.
Sure, it aligns well with Western interests, but we shouldn't read much from that. Note that Turkey did not respond in this fashion earlier in the year when Syria shot down a Turkish fighter jet. If the US had wanted to push a military confrontation, it would have happened then. This is Turkey acting on its own behalf.
Turkey IS a Muslim nation, but one with very strong separation of church and state. They are perhaps the most "Westernized" of all the Muslim nations. I've got no problem with that... In fact, I'd love to visit Istanbul some day!
Only really matters to the right wing clowns on here who continue to tell us they learnt everything they needed to know about islam on 9/11
Istanbul was Constantinople Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople Been a long time gone, Constantinople Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks
There's an element of that. Rebels have been flooding into Syria via Turkey for a long time now, many of them Salafist, Al Qaeda types. This is with US assistance, showing just where priorities lie in the supposed "war on terror". But Turkey has shown that it is capable of being an independent actor as well, defying the US on some important issues.
