Turkey's NATO allies called Syria's downing of a Turkish jet "completely unacceptable" following an emergency meeting in Brussels on Tuesday. Bolstered by that Western support, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened a military response if Syria pushes its soldiers, who are trying to put down an uprising, too close to its Mediterranean neighbors' border. Despite the increasingly bellicose rhetoric — and a second incident Monday in which Syria aimed menacing fire at a rescue plane looking for the downed Turkish jet's two-man crew — NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says he doesn't expect the clash to escalate. But NATO's charter states that an attack on one country in the security alliance is considered an attack on all 28 members. Could tensions between Syria and Turkey draw NATO into a war?
NATO will avoid a war at all costs: This saber rattling "has the feel of a turning point that could drag Western powers" into Syria's escalating conflict, say Slobodan Lekic and Suzan Fraser of The Associated Press. But the "hard talk" is deceiving. NATO has no appetite for another war in the Middle East, nor do the Arab League and U.N. Security Council. Barring a truly dramatic change, a military intervention in Syria is "all but unthinkable."
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