Ankara has drawn up plans for establishing “safe zones” inside Syria to protect refugees fleeing a year-long government crackdown, a top advisor to Prime Minister Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan told an American daily on Wednesday.
But the trigger is interesting:
Erdoğan advisor İbrahim Kalın and other Ankara insiders reportedly told The Wall Street Journal that Ankara officials have drawn up plans for establishing safe zones inside its southern neighbor which would be established in the event of a humanitarian crisis. Although Kalın reportedly told the paper that Ankara was far from planning any immediate action on Syria, he said it had decided on a threshold for the number of deaths inside Syria it would tolerate before taking “tougher measures.”
So 8,000 dead so far isn't a humanitarian crisis as far as Turkey is concerned. But there is a level of deaths that Turkey won't tolerate. One has to wonder if Turkey has decided that crossing that threshold even without a United Nations Security Council blessing is reason enough to act.
This is always the dilemma of tyrants facing angry people. It is always safer to hit hard and fast to suppress a rebellion in order to deprive foreigners the option of intervening. Bashar Assad's father had it right when he went Medieval on Hama back in 1982. Those who might intervene will shake their heads for decades at the brutality, but in the end they'll deal with those who successfully suppress a rebellion
