As the two countries exchange cross-border fire, we ask if it is in Turkey's national interest to go into Syria.
t was a week in which the Syrian conflict spilled over the Turkish border with deadly impact.
Recep Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, sought and got permission from parliament to take whatever military action is deemed necessary, including the deployment of forces into Syria. In a rare show of unity, all members of the UN Security Council condemned the mortar attack but avoided any debate about invoking Chapter Seven which would allow economic sanctions and even military action. There was also verbal condemnation from NATO but that is where it ended as there was no question of invoking Article 5 of NATO's charter that would require all the organisation's members to defend Turkey. The international allies clearly signalled that if Turkey was going to take military action inside Syria it would do so alone.
The official opposition insists that what it describes as Ankara's skewed support of the Syrian opposition has made the situation worse. And in a warning to Damascus, Erdogan said that testing Turkey would be a "fatal mistake". "We are not interested in war, but we're not far from it either. Those who attempt to test Turkey's deterrence, its decisiveness, its capacity, I say here they are making a fatal mistake." So, with Turkey now essentially on war footing, is escalation inevitable? Inside Syria, with presenter Mike Hanna, discusses the situation with guests: Yasar Yakis, a member of the Turkish parliament, a founding member of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development party, also a former foreign minister and a former ambassador to the UN Office in Vienna, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia; Haldun Solmazturk, a retired brigadier-general; and Joshua Landis, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies and an associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
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