It seems like it was only yesterday that crude plunged ahead of the first presidential debate as the escalation between Turkey and Syria hit a fever pitch, with Syria supposedly firing shell into Turkey and Turkey relatiating promptly, as it concurrently summoned NATO and demanded an Article 4 redress while passing a bill [5]allowing its military to conduct cross-border operations in Syria, essentially giving itself a carte blanche to invade Syria without declaring outright war. Today, 48 hours later, Turkey may just get the opportunity to execute on this brand new law.
Reuters reports [6]that "the Turkish military returned fire after a mortar bomb fired from Syria landed in countryside in southern Turkey, the state-run Anatolian news agency reported the governor of Hatay province as saying on Friday. Turkish artillery bombarded Syrian military targets on Wednesday and Thursday in response to shelling by Syrian forces that killed five Turkish civilians further east along the border." Ignore that the official plotline said that Syria "apologized [7]" for its offense, even as [8]"an online video purporting to be from Jabhat al-Nusra, a jihadist group accused of ties to al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility."
So which is it: Syria or Al Qaeda doing everything in its power to incite the full fury of a NATO retaliation which would certainly level Damascus in one campaign, something Syria knows too well. Something which Al Qaeda certainly knows too well, as it knows that all that the developed world needs is an excuse for war, preferably one which is framed as self-defense. Finally, one wonders: just who is funding Al Qaeda these days, a question needing further exploration if this headline [9]from two weeks ago, "Turkish Airline Flying Al-Qaeda from Pakistan to Syrian Borders", before any of the recent escalation, proves true.
In other words, is Turkey flying in the same people who are taking responsibility for launching attacks into its own territory, and why?
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