After two days of shelling Syria, Turkey rattled its sabers yesterday with a warning that full-out war was around the corner, Reuters reports.

"We are not interested in war, but we're not far from war either," Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told a crowd in Istanbul. "Those who attempt to test Turkey's deterrence ... I say here they are making a fatal mistake."



Turkey also told Syria to stay 6 miles away from the border and ordered several Syrian warplanes to turn back after getting too close, according to a Turkish news site.



The Atlantic rounds up reactions, noting that Reuters called Erdogan's speech "belligerent" and the Guardian described it as "muscular."



A Turkish anti-war blogger wrote that Erdogan's support will slide "if he becomes more hardline."



Analyzing the conflict on YNet, Ron Ben-Yishai writes that Erdogan had to get aggressive because Turkish civilians were killed. But a war would destabilize Syria and allow "al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist elements" to take advantage "of the lack of governance in Syria to turn it into a terror base—like in Sinai and Somalia."