Turkey wants our help with Syria

Turkey can’t take any more, said Asli Aydintasbas in Milliyet. The Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad is now “an open and clear national security threat.” Last week, two car bombs ripped through crowds in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, killing 46 people and wounding dozens more. It’s the fourth attack on Turkish soil since the Syrian conflict began, and by far the worst. The Turkish government quickly identified the perpetrators and arrested nine men it said were agents of the Syrian regime. At this point, Reyhanli and other border towns are teeming with Syrian refugees. These places have become staging points for funneling weapons and supplies to the rebels, and that makes them targets. Assad’s forces are now gaining ground with the support of Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, putting Turkey’s southern flank “in danger of Lebanonization.” It’s time to tell our closest ally, the U.S., that “it is past time to do something.”

Will these bombings be enough to trigger NATO action? asked Gokhan Bacik in Today’s Zaman. Last year, Syria shot down a Turkish jet, prompting NATO to authorize the deployment of Patriot missile batteries along the border. Now, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is under “huge public pressure” to do more to respond to the attacks, and he wants international backup. The big question is whether he can persuade fellow members of NATO “of the necessity of military intervention.” It’ll be a tough sell, said Ihsan Dagi, also in Today’s Zaman. It would mean invoking NATO’s “common defense” mechanism, and that’s a pretty high bar. Erdogan headed to Washington this week to discuss the situation with the U.S. president, but Obama has made it clear he is “not enthusiastic about engaging in a direct operation against the Assad government.” All we can hope for is a no-fly zone—a measure that could actually increase the risk of more Syrian terror attacks on Turkish soil.

The solution here may not be military, said Murat Yetkin in Hurriyet. Until now, the Syrian conflict has played out as “a second Cold War between the United States and Russia.” Along with Iran, Russia is the major supporter of the Assad regime, and Russia’s only Mediterranean military base is in the Syrian port of Tartus. The U.S., for its part, has given Turkey the green light to supply the rebels. But last week the U.S. and Russia agreed to hold an international conference on the conflict and invite both regime and rebel representatives.

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The Syria conference will be crucial, said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.) in an editorial. The conflict is now destabilizing the region and causing “the most agonizing political dilemma” for Russia and the U.S. since the war in Bosnia in the 1990s. Of course, “the key to ending that conflict was NATO.” The alliance has been reluctant to back direct military action, but bit by bit it is now being pushed in that direction. “The alternative is to watch impotently as Syria drags the whole region into the abyss.”