Turkey’s surprise tactics failed

Turkey has a long history of conducting extreme operations with its secret services. The most traumatic of these for us was against the Greek minority in Istanbul in September 1955. On August 21, 2013, it was accused of launching a deadly sarin gas attack on a Damascus suburb, killing hundreds. The aim of that operation was to prompt a US military intervention by making it appear that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had violated an American ban on chemical weapons. Given Turkey's proclivity for such extreme tactics, let us consider the events of recent days.

Clashes between Turkish and Syrian government forces culminated on February 27 and resulted in the death of 34 Turkish soldiers in Syria's Idlib province. Facing the risk of losing control of the area, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan resuscitated his plan for a 30 kilometer safe zone along the Turkish-Syrian...