Breaking News: Turkey Attacks Syria

According to a statement just released by the office of the Turkish Prime Minister, Turkish military forces have fired heavy artillery “on points in Syria that were detected with radar, in line with the rules of engagement.” The strike was in response to a mortar bomb shot from a Syrian border town that reportedly killed five Turkish citizens in the southeastern town of Akcakale. One woman and four children died in the initial attack, and at least eight were seriously wounded.

“It (latest mortar round) hit right in the middle of the neighborhood. The wife and four children from the same family died,” Ahmet Emin Meshurgul, local head of the Turkish Red Crescent, related to Reuters.

“People here are anxious, because we got hit before. Security forces tried to convince people to empty the neighborhood near the border, but now we’ve been hit right in the middle of the town,” he said.

At least according to the state-owned Anadolu news agency, there had been two explosions.

“Following the first blast, many homes and businesses were damaged. A second blast took place at the same location. According to preliminary reports, at least three people were killed and nine others wounded. Among the wounded were Turkish police officers,” a witness reported to Anadolu.

Mounting Tensions

Ever since Syria descended into civil war, tensions have been incrementally mounting along the often porous Syrian and Turkish border. Besides the steadily increasing flow of Syrians flowing into Turkish territory to escape the parlous conflict, Syrian opposition forces have established bases of operation along the border as well. Intermittent clashes between Syrian and Turkish forces have frequently been reported.

In April, Turkey officially reported an incident to the United Nations in which at least five people, including two Turkish officials, were wounded when cross-border gunfire hit a Syrian refugee camp in Kilis. Also, In June a Turkish reconnaissance jet was shot down by Syria, inflaming already simmering hostilities.

The US has condemned the Syrian cross-border shooting but has been careful to avoid committing itself to a more aggressive plan of intervention for fear of alienating Syrian opposition forces it supports, at least rhetorically, and for being of drawn into the conflict further.

“We are outraged that the Syrians have been shooting across the border. We are very regretful about the loss of life that has occurred on the Turkish side,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in remarks Wednesday during an appearance with Kazakhstan’s visiting foreign minister.

“We are working with our Turkish friends. I will be speaking with the (Turkish) foreign minister later to discuss what the best way forward would be,” Clinton said. She called the border tinderbox “a very, very dangerous situation.”

Turkey’s Earlier Responses: Careful Diplomacy

Prior to today’s military strikes, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has deemphasized Syrian links to a recent uptick in terrorist attacks in Turkey, saying unrest across the border was not the cause of Turkey’s problems.

Turkey has seen an upsurge in attacks over the past few weeks, including a car bombing in the southern city of Gaziantep on Monday that killed nine people. Increasingly, public opinion in Turkey has attributed this violence to the chaos in Syria, and some Turkish officials have fanned the flames of this finger pointing.

In an interview on Turkish television late on Friday, Davutoğlu acknowledged that some terrorists may be trying to take advantage of gathering lawlessness in Syria, but that generally these attacks were hardly new:

“Terror in Turkey did not appear as a result of the developments in Syria, it is a problem that has lasted for 30 years. The terror organization may want to exploit chaos in Syria, however, to think that Turkey’s terror incidents originate in Syria would a be a deficient approach. It is not possible to explain terror with one factor.”

The Problem of Homegrown Terror: the PKK

Turkish diplomacy has proceeded so delicately partly because of its own problem of domestic terrorism. Kurdish separatists, organized into the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), has been fighting the Turkish state for self-rule since 1984. The Turkish government considers the PKK a terrorist organization, as does the US and the UK. Turkey has blamed the bombing of Gaziantep, a border town densely populated with Syrian refugees, on the PKK and have apprehended at least a dozen PKK members in connection with the attack.

While the PKK has intensified its attacks on Turkish assets in the last two months, particularly along the southeastern border with Syria, they have officially denied any involvement in the Gaziantep bombing.

Some experts considered the attacks a response to strengthening ties between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Syrian President Assad. Prior to the opposition’s uprising against Assad, Erdogan had fashioned warm relations with Assad and was planning a variety of joint ventures, including counter-terrorist operations against PKK strongholds within Syrian territory.

Complicating matters even further, Turkish intelligence has long suspected one Syrian Kurdish movement, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), of working in concert with the PKK. Some have speculated that Assad encouraged the PYD to overrun a series of towns in northern Syria to prevent natives from joining the opposition rebel forces attempting to overthrow him.

An About Face: Turkish Bluster

After initially trying to downplay the growing acrimony and violence along the Syrian/Turkish border, Turkey has now adopted a much more muscular rhetoric:

“Our armed forces in the border region responded immediately to this abominable attack in line with their rules of engagement; targets were struck through artillery fire against places in Syria identified by radar. Turkey will never leave unanswered such kinds of provocation by the Syrian regime against our national security.”

The Role of NATO

The explosive situation is complicated by the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO and expects the organization to assist in defending it against attack. Still, according to a NATO spokesperson, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Davutoglu he unequivocally condemned the strike.

Rasmussen and Davutoglu have reportedly been in close contact with each other, including prior to the Turkish military strikes. Despite publicly condemning the attacks, and declaring that NATO currently has no intention to intervene in the burgeoning conflict, Rasmussen has also said that NATO is prepared to defend Turkey, should circumstances demand it.

Category: Featured, International