Emotions concerning Syria are high but split in Turkey. During the ten years of AKP reign in Turkey there has been no policy of the government that has not received public support except two. One is Turkey’s involvement in Syria, the second is the major change in middle-level education put into effect hastily without calculating whether it would really improve the quality of the education of millions of children (Metropoll’s September public opinion poll).
At a time when people were confused about the fate of the Syrian debacle, a mortar shell fell into the Turkish border town of Akçakale fired from inside Syria killing five and wounding a number of other citizens. Material damage is considerable. The Turkish Foreign Ministry has immediately reported the incident to the United Nations and NATO. Turkey asked the U.N. Security Council to take the "necessary action" to stop Syrian aggression.
However, this was not the only action Turkey took; it fired back to demolish the point(s) of attack that was traced through radar surveillance. Now Turkey is practically part of a war that it was involved indirectly by supporting the opposition. So far Turkey had hosted opposition groups that have set up their headquarters inside Turkey and accepted an increasing a number of (nearing 100,000) refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria.

NATO’s response was what Turkey wanted to hear: “Standing by the member-nation Turkey” and urging “Syria to put an end to flagrant violations of international law". Turkish Parliament met on Thursday to discuss the matter and to come up with an action plan. The general inclination is to retaliate in a decisive way without entering Syrian territory.
By the time this article was penned it was not clear who had fired the mortar into Turkish territory, it could be the miscalculation of opposition forces or a third party to get Turkey involved in the Syrian swamp and to be battered along the way. Turkish officials are almost certain that the culprit is the Syrian army. In any case Turkish authorities have declared that Turkey was going increasing the number of troops along its Syrian border.
The response of the Syrian (Assad) government was more apologetic than expected: Information Minister Omran Zoabi offered his condolences to the Turkish people and said his country respected the sovereignty of neighboring countries. He also added that they were investigating regarding who fired the mortar shell and urged restraint.
However, this mild statement was not enough to cool the already hiked up emotions on the Turkish side. In fact a number of deputies (MPs) suggested that the right to intervene in Syria along an impending authorization to enter Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish ‘terrorists’ should be put to vote at the same time. Indeed the first resolution after a long summer recess of the Parliament was going to be extending a five-year-old authorization for military cross-border operations to eliminate Kurdish militant installations in northern Iraq.

The matter of the fact is that shells and bullets have been falling on Turkish territory since the opposition forces had captured the border zone adjacent to Turkey. Forces loyal to Damascus want to get it back. This is a tug of war going on inside Syria but settlements so close to a border artificially drawn by the West following WW1 have virtually split communities leaving one part on one side and the other in the next. This fact is creating a humanitarian problem that could only be concluded with the end of the civil war. And the war seems to be impossible to end in reconciliation. Too much blood has been shed and too many sides have entered into the equation with differing interests and game plans. So, one side has to win. Winning or losing of one side will definitely affect those that take up sides with any of the contending parties. This predicament is deeply felt by the Turkish public opinion and the general feeling is that the government should keep Turkey outside this debacle.
Ankara that is considerably involved in the conflict feels to be left alone and frustrated by a lack of international support in ending the bloody conflict. Her efforts to produce a solution at the United Nations have been blocked by a standoff in the Security Council between three Western nations and Russia and China. The latter powers believe that a radical U.N. decision would lead to the invasion of Syria by Western powers and their regional allies, including Turkey, diminishing their influence in the Mediterranean region.
A hopeful start by the new Egyptian government intending to bring together Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia to produce a more regional solution fell flat when Saudi Arabia stayed away from the second round of meetings. Is uncertainty the nature of the Middle East?


Prof. Dr. Doğu Ergil is a Professor of political Science in Fatih University \ Turkey, and also an expert on the Kurdish Question, and he is one of the well-known authors in Turkey.